Is the special relationship between Israel and America souring?

President Biden doesn’t give many sit-down television interviews, but when he does, he tends to make news. This week he sat down for an on-air session with CNN’s Erin Burnett, who asked him point-blank whether US bombs given to Israel have caused civilian casualties in Gaza.

Biden’s response was notable not necessarily because the answer was a mystery (of course US bombs have killed civilians there) but rather because Biden showed a considerable degree of frustration with Israel’s war strategy. ‘Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they [Israel] go after population centres,’ the President said. ‘I’ve made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet: They’re not going to get our support, if in fact they go on these population centres.’ 

Biden’s remarks, in tandem with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s confirmation that a shipment of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs (along with 1,700 lighter munitions) destined for Israel was paused, caused heated reaction on all sides of the debate. For progressive Democrats, the suspension was seven months too late; for Republican lawmakers and some moderate Democrats, Biden was effectively handing Hamas a propaganda win.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet members were livid at the news. Netanyahu defiantly produced a short video in which he said Israel would win the war alone if need be. Other criticisms were downright insulting: National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of supporting a terrorist group in his past life, bluntly stated that Hamas loved Biden.  

You can’t blame Netanyahu for feeling a little surprised. Before this week, Biden went out of his way to disabuse anybody of the notion that US military support was conditional in any way. Since the war in Gaza started last October, the Biden administration has pretty much given Israel whatever it needed to fight Hamas – and then some.

Even so, Biden’s rhetoric became more wary as the Palestinian death toll got larger. In December, he told donors at a fundraiser that Israel was bombing Gaza ‘indiscriminately’. In early April, as famine was beginning to creep into parts of northern Gaza, Biden told Netanyahu in a phone call that future US support would be determined by Israel’s cooperation in allowing humanitarian aid into the enclave. With the exception of a few days of greater humanitarian deliveries into Gaza, Biden’s threats didn’t really get him anywhere. The death toll is now approaching 35,000 Palestinians, the humanitarian situation remains dismal and top UN officials like Martin Griffiths continue to warn that civilians are being starved. 

If we take him at his word, Biden has run out of patience with Netanyahu and the band of far-right ministers propping up his government. That’s one part of the story. The other, more significant, part is that the United States is finally using some assertiveness when it comes to its Israel policy. While this isn’t unprecedented in the history of US-Israel relations – Ronald Reagan held up F-16 fighter jet deliveries to Israel on multiple occasions during his first term – using the stick has become increasingly rare over the last quarter-century. The US-Israel relationship is viewed almost as untouchable, where even the slightest disagreements are kept behind closed doors or swept under the rug. 

Comparably speaking, it’s abundantly clear that the United States is the senior member in this relationship. The power metrics don’t lie. Israel’s $525 billion (£418 billion) economy makes up two per cent of America’s. Demographically, there are about as many Israelis as there are North Carolinians. While Israel is a nuclear weapons power with the most formidable defence force in the Middle East, it can’t compete with the US military (nor does it have to). 

But US-Israel ties are a bit of an anomaly in that the wealth and power disparity between Washington and Tel Aviv doesn’t necessarily translate into America calling the shots. Indeed very often, it looks like the US is doing Israel’s bidding. It’s the US, not Israel, acting as if it was the junior partner trying to get on its patron’s good side. 

Examples abound. When the US leverages its veto at the UN Security Council, it’s typically to shield Israel from some form of international censure, whether on the subject of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state or more recently the war in Gaza. The US across successive administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have expended a lot of diplomatic capital in the international arena killing initiatives on Israel’s behalf. The status-quo is so ingrained that when President Barack Obama ordered the US delegation at the UN to abstain rather than veto a resolution calling Israeli settlements illegal under international law (which, by the way, was already official US policy), the decision made global headlines.

The US has given approximately $300 billion (£239 billion) worth of military and economic aid to Israel since its founding in 1946. This is a consequence of US presidents striking and implementing executive-level memorandums of understanding with their Israeli counterparts that guarantee billions of dollars in defence support to Israel every year. Although the US doesn’t have a mutual defence treaty with Israel like it does with Nato members, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, most people expect that Washington would come to Israel’s defence in the event of an external attack (as it did in April when Iran launched a retaliatory drone and missile attack at Israel). Washington’s commitment to Israel is even enshrined in domestic law: the US must maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge in the Middle East. It must also ensure that any sale or export of US defence equipment to any other country in the region won’t negatively affect Israel’s military superiority.

There are those who argue that a stronger Israel is in the US national interest anyway, so what’s the harm of the status quo? Yet there is harm, and we’re currently seeing it on our television screens, reading it in our newspapers and watching as US and Israeli officials bicker about who’s right and who’s wrong.

Israel, having been the beneficiary of US security aid for decades even when its foreign policy undermines American objectives in the Middle East, has grown entitled of that support. This, in addition to the fact that Biden’s pause on munitions is occurring as the war in Gaza continues, explains much of Israel’s irritation. But the whole episode also explains something else: while the US-Israel relationship isn’t a one-way street, it has certainly favoured Israel.   

France is waking up to the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood. Is Britain?

Donald Trump made headlines this month when he claimed that London and Paris are no longer recognisable because ‘they have opened their doors to jihad’. It was a characteristically provocative statement from the former US president, and one that had his many enemies huffing and puffing with indignation. Trump was wrong to describe the two cities as ‘unrecognisable’ but he was right in saying that a ‘jihad’ is being waged.

‘Jihad’, at least to non-Muslims, has violent connotations but the word means ‘struggle’ or ‘utmost effort’, and so there are also ideological jihads. This is the jihad that is being waged against the West this century.

In what may come to be regarded as one of the most significant interventions by the government of Emmanuel Macron, Gérald Darmanin – the French Interior Minister – gave a remarkable interview to a newspaper at the weekend. The subject was the Muslim Brotherhood, described by Darmanin as a ‘vicious organisation’. As he explained, the Brotherhood doesn’t wage violent jihad, but deploys ‘much gentler methods…[to] gradually bring all sections of society into the Islamic matrix’.

Darmanin’s remarks were clearly made with the approval of Macron. The president has authorised the Ministry of the Interior to compile a report on the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. In a communique announcing this task, the ministry stated; ‘Islamist separatism is a theorised politico-religious project…aimed at building a counter-society. The Muslim Brotherhood plays a major role in disseminating such a system of thought.’

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Darmanin intends the report to be ‘a wake-up call’ to the methods of the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘They attack all areas of society and form a network: sport, education, medicine, justice, student and trade union organisations, NGOs, politics, associations and culture,’ said Darmanin. ‘They give voting instructions, support community businesses, use anti-French rhetoric, launch petitions, surround local elected representatives, sign economic partnerships with major brands.’

But the Brotherhood’s most successful achievement has been the introduction into the West of a new word: Islamophobia. ‘This is their word, and it covers their primary strategy, that of victimisation,’ said Darmanin.

For example, when pupils started arriving at school last September wearing Islamic dress, it was a flagrant challenge to France’s secularism laws. But it was twisted by some to make it appear that Muslims were being victimised.

Darmanin’s remarks have been welcomed by specialists in the field of the Muslim Brotherhood. Prominent among them is Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who has been studying the movement for three decades and as a consequence requires police protection. In her 2023 book about the Brotherhood, she wrote that ‘their goal isn’t to adapt Islam to Europe but to adapt Europe to Islam’.

Austria outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in 2021, but no other European country has followed suit. Darmanin said there will be no ban in France because ‘that is quite simply impossible’; this is because of the Brotherhood’s secretive nature and lack of defined hierarchy.

Instead, what is required is a ‘European awakening’, which Darmanin said he is pleased to see happening in Germany and Sweden. German intelligence is reportedly monitoring the activity of the Islamic Community of Germany, an organisation overseeing a network of mosques and cultural associations.

One country Darmanin didn’t namecheck as being alert to the threat was Britain. Here the Brotherhood is flourishing in a country notoriously naïve – in French eyes – about Islamism. In his 2019 book about the Muslim Brotherhood, The Project, Alexandre del Valle (who collaborated with MI5 during his time in French intelligence in the 1990s and was shocked by their insouciance) explained that, in the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings, the organisation was seen as the ‘moderate’ voice of Muslims. Del Valle alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood has strong links to the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) – a claim denied by the MAB. In March this year, Michael Gove named MAB as a group of ‘Islamist orientation and beliefs’, and he said the government was considering classifying the organisation as extremist. MAB responded by threatening legal action.

This is perhaps not a surprise. A report in France this week by the country’s intelligence service highlighted how the Muslim Brotherhood has built a ‘vast network of lawyers…committed to the cause’.

The Muslim Association of Britain is part of the pressure group, The Muslim Vote, which has just issued Keir Starmer with 18 ‘demands’. Some of these are about Labour’s position on Gaza, but there are others closer to home: allowing Muslims to pray at school, for instance, and tightening the definition of ‘Islamophobia’. 

As Florence Bergeaud-Blackler explained, the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy is to adapt Europe to Islam; not through Donald Trump’s understanding of jihad, but by a passive political struggle. France has identified the threat, and so have other European countries, but Britain remains cut off from the continent in its complacency.

Women will be disappointed by the Garrick Club

Perhaps it was the anachronistic use of the term ‘gentlemen’ that finally put paid to the idea of the gentlemen’s club. If only these illustrious institutions had thought to rename themselves ‘cis-male inner-city safe spaces’, we probably wouldn’t be looking on aghast as another centuries old tradition is summarily flushed down the memory hole.

Strange that it’s taken the perpetually peeved a couple of hundred years to twig that gentlemen’s clubs were exclusively designed for… oh never mind, it’s a tough one to fathom I know, especially for all those highly educated Garrick club members who have just voted 60/40 in favour of admitting women, thereby abolishing one of the clubs’ founding principles: providing a plush place for educated chaps to enjoy a laugh or two over pappy prep school style grub and some decent wine.

The Garrick’s decision to put female membership to a vote came after the Guardian published a list of members which, surprise, surprise, for a ‘gentlemen’s club’ contains… oh never mind.  

The reaction of London’s bien pensant has been predictably po-faced. In an interview with the Today programme Juliet Stevenson, a posho leftist thesp who would no doubt welcome ‘minority-only spaces’, reminded us that for hundreds of years the Garrick has been largely dedicated to the ‘theatre community’ and the ‘arts community’ (note the identitarian use of the word ‘community’) and as such ‘must by definition’ be open to all. Who says it ‘must’ do anything – it’s a private club paid for by its members who presumably knew exactly what they were signing up for.

The actor’s silky Rada tones then shift into social justice salad speak with attendant glottal stops: ‘I mean, what are you doin’, you gonna make ar’[t] or theatre or wha’ever just about the male narrative?’ Erm, has she been to the theatre recently or clicked on BBC iPlayer? And what does ‘male narrative’ even mean?

She goes on to spectacularly misunderstand the purpose of a gentlemen’s club. Yes the Garrick has always attracted arty types but it was never meant to be a ‘hub where ideas are exchanged’ or where ‘discussions are generated about the work we do, who it’s for and where we need to be going with it.’ These are dry exchanges best left for the green room or Socialist Worker fun days out.

During the interview our Juliet assures us that she’s much more interested in exchanging ideas than ‘wining and dining’. Well, if that’s her idea of a fun night out she may be disappointed when she eventually becomes a member of the Garrick. The last time I spent an evening there I got right royally ratted with ex news anchorman and all round good egg Michael Buerk; I don’t remember exchanging many ideas other than agreeing to go on a pub crawl round Soho after a boozy Garrick supper, and jolly fun it was too.

And that is the point, these clubs are chiefly about entertainment. During my brief membership of that other bastion of the old establishment, the Beefsteak, I always found the place to be surprisingly convivial; yes, we were all blokes and yes we all drank too much but only because, for a small additional fee, meals came with unlimited Burgundy. After lunch those who could still walk might stagger over to the Garrick for a snooze followed by a half decent supper.

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Contrary to what progressives like to think, gentlemen’s clubs have never been about networking, mainly because members tend to already be at the top of their game. Most members have joined to escape work. At mealtimes Beefsteak members are discouraged from discussing their careers because doing so is considered a bit naff and there are clear rules about not inviting ‘bores’ – sorry Juliet.

The reason so many pillars of the old male establishment have been keen to sign up – often having to wait years – is because gentlemen’s clubs are one of the few places they feel able to loosen the old school tie.

The Guardian dismisses what are essentially upmarket drinking dens as ‘bastions of male elitism’ but they are no more elitist than any other private members club. Yes you need to be proposed in order to join but the idea that these rather beautiful 18th century edifices harbour a cabal of oppressive patriarchs eagerly plotting against women and minorities is for the birds. It is disingenuous of Guardian journos to suggest that these kindly old gents still represent ‘the establishment’, knowing full well that it is they who now rule the roost. Forget elevating male narratives, many of the ancient Beefsteakers I met could barely elevate themselves out of their leather-bound armchairs. 

Rachel Johnson, of this parish, has said that women like her don’t need female only clubs and that she would never belong to one anyway because she enjoys, eh-hem, male narratives too much. On the other hand, men appreciate single sex clubs because we tend not to have the same kind of friendship groups as women.  

What bad faith Guardianistas fail to grasp is that far from fostering misogyny, the Garrick and its ilk exist simply to allow socially awkward ex-public school boys the opportunity to hang out together without worrying about the female gaze. Boarding school survivors are notoriously hopeless around women.

My mother’s peculiar approach to death

Back in February, a friend forwarded me a profound and joyous article written by Simon Boas about his terminal cancer diagnosis. (I knew Simon a little at university, where he was both much cleverer and much cooler than me). Originally published in the Jersey Evening Post, it’s since been reproduced here, and seems to have, as they say, gone viral. In the age of mindless clickbait, where cute animal memes and chest-feeding men dominate the internet, it’s reassuring that something so beautiful, which mines the fundamentals of human existence, still resonates. And does it with such humour and grace and intelligence and warmth that while Simon is devoid of bitterness, it’s hard for the rest of us not to feel aggrieved.

That article has also made me think a great deal more about death – something I try to avoid doing. Indeed, one of my least charming habits is to be abroad when those close to me are nearing the end. It’s not deliberate but I wonder if my id knows what I’m doing. I’m uneasy with physical contact at the best of times, and especially so with sick people – teenage pilgrimages to Lourdes were really protracted CBT. Not much psychoanalysis would be required to ascertain that this is probably in response to growing up with a beloved mother who is far less sanguine than Simon. She’s essentially obsessed with, terrified of, and yet amused by death. Pretty much in equal measure.

During my childhood, she would sit up in bed reading that seminal 1968 page-turner, A Dictionary of Symptoms by Dr Joan Gomez, in a bid to manage imaginary conditions which she was sure would see her off before dawn. The result is that she’s a pretty good diagnostician and a total fruit loop. We spent our childhood convinced that she could drop dead at any moment (especially if we were to tickle her or if she were to suppress wind). 

Unsurprisingly against the background of constantly being on standby for imminent maternal death, I developed a distaste for both science and the sight of blood, so my mother turned her attentions to my younger brother and basically groomed him into becoming a doctor – no mean feat on her part given the intellectual sluggishness he displayed as a child. 

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My mother’s morbid fixation extends to how she handles the deaths of others. I suspect that funeral parlours across London have circulated her photograph, accompanied by a warning to avoid dealing with her at all costs, such are the frequency of her visits when someone cops it. Her parents’ deaths, more than a decade apart, caused predictable weirdness. She particularly adored her father who died first. So, after much deliberation and many visits to Mears & Cotterill in Wandsworth, she decided that while she was happy for him to be burnt to a crisp, she didn’t want him ground. When she was presented with a rather cumbersome box, she executed a macabre volte face, chucked him in the back of her Volvo, and returned to the crem, having changed her mind about having him put through the grinder. She therefore knew the drill when her mother died, but then had to wrestle with what to do with their plastic urns. They’re currently in a cupboard with her Wentworth jigsaws, stashed between a Breughel and a Van Gogh. It’s what they would have wanted. 

By contrast, when dealing with my father’s death, her pragmatism was unsettling. He wasn’t cold by the time a plot in his favourite churchyard in Dumfriesshire had been secured and the transportation booked. I can’t claim any moral high ground, because, true to form, I was in the States when he died. When I got back, my mother took me straight from the airport to see his body. There’s something horribly ghoulish about such visits, not least because morticians insist on making the dead up to look like drunken drag queens at the tail-end of a night on the tiles. I was feeling quite tearful when I became aware that my mother was bent double. I assumed that the finality of the situation was sinking in – only to discover that she was in fact crying at his face paint with the sort of laughter that actually hurts. It took her several minutes to compose herself, which given the lugubrious Lurch-types hovering to box him up, nail the lid down, and take him to the church, was rather awkward. It must have all been captured on the CCTV which is presumably a necessary precaution in an undertaker’s. We can only hope that it makes for educative footage on the varying manifestations of grief for funeral directors in training. 

The paradox of a novelty doughnut

There are moments when you realise the world is a more complicated place than you had previously thought. I had such moment earlier this week when I saw a new doughnut at a concession stand in Hammersmith station: a Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut.

The only possible connection between the two companies I can think of is that their lines of business often invite the same prefix: fast food and fast fashion. Beyond that, I’m at a loss. And yet there the doughnut sat, a pink ring with swirly purple bumps and a unicorn horn. It looked like Kandinsky had tried his hand at illustrating a gynaecology textbook.

I thought of the doughnut again while reading an old Alexander Chancellor book review in which he quotes Ian Frazer’s Gone to New York: ‘Like many Americans, I fear living in a nowhere, in a place that is no-place; in Brooklyn, that doesn’t trouble me at all.’ I have the same sort of fear, which is probably why I live in London. But what exactly is wrong with nowhere? After all, you can still get hold of all the essentials. There is electricity and running water in nowhere, still supermarkets and even the odd restaurant if you’re willing to drive. 

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What you won’t get is a Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut. Because objects like the Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut are highly specialised products. Thousands of individuals within a supremely complex and integrated economy must be rallied in the pursuit of such a thing. Sure, you could probably get one in a town the size of Padstow. But invent it? You need the full throbbing matrix of one of the most advanced economies on the planet to come up with something as singular as the Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut. 

I can’t quite explain why I was drawn to the thing. Partly it was the same motivation as George Mallory’s – ‘because it was there’ – and partly because it seemed so frivolous: an ultra-processed snack rebranded in the colours of a low brow women’s fashion house. What’s more, it was an alien frivolity. I couldn’t possibly understand the values of a person who might want this – the kind of person who is so excited by a website on which she can order a £7 bikini that she feels motivated to buy an associated doughnut. It just seemed so weird. Which is why I decided to buy it.

So in a fit of perverse reverence, I made my way to one of the chain’s outlets. The nice lady in a headscarf didn’t bat an eyelid when I asked for the doughnut. Maybe it’s quite normal to see a man in corduroy trousers with a receding hairline ordering things marketed at teenage girls. 

There is a strong part of me that wants to tell you that the doughnut is disgusting. But that wouldn’t be quite right. Yes, the little purple swirls tasted like Superdrug perfume. And yes, I couldn’t distinguish a particular flavour in the sprinklings because of the wince-inducing sweetness. But bizarrely, it had a sort of balance to it: industrial levels of sugar gave way to the limbic-hacking fattiness of fried, dissolving dough. 

As I finished it, I felt a kind of grim acidity lingering in my sternum and a light stinging behind my eyes. I was repulsed but also, somehow, satisfied. For £3.60, I had experienced the paradox of urban life: I want to live in a place where I can acquire things I do not want. The world, I thought to myself, is truly a more complicated place than I had previously thought.

Apple downplays the value of human achievement

In January 1984, Blade Runner and Alien director Ridley Scott shot an Apple computer Super Bowl commercial mocking Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four — and it changed the television advertising landscape forever. It featured a woman in a white tank top and bright red shorts destroying a monochrome screen with a sledgehammer.

This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook promoted a new ad titled “Crush” that gave the exact opposite message and led to a furious backlash on social media. The ad begins with lights coming on in a factory setting with cultural items and artifacts stacked on top of each other, all gathered on a giant industrial press.

Then the press begins to lower as a Sonny and Cher song plays. A piano is smashed and splattered with paint buckets. An arcade machine, a drawing figure, record player, trumpet, vintage film and stock cameras are destroyed. A Greek bust is smashed, and eventually the press, drooling with several different colors of paint, closes completely. When it lifts up, the new iPad rests in the middle with a voiceover bragging about how thin it is.

As several people noted on X, the ad was a direct inverse of the Nineteen Eighty-Four ad and representative of the destruction of physical media and the culture that made America. One poster on X wrote, “Apple’s new ‘Crush’ ad (let’s call it ‘2024’) is a visual & metaphorical bookend to the 1984 ad. 1984: Monochrome, conformist, industrial world exploded by colorful, vibrant human 2024: Colorful, vibrant humanity is crushed by monochrome, conformist, industrial press.”

Wall Street Journal tech reporter Katie Deighton noted, “This ad perfectly encapsulates the insight that people think technology is killing everything we ever found joy in. And then presents that as a good thing.”

Whatever Apple intended, the reaction was catastrophic and the exact opposite of its intention. Apple might have been attempting to say that a piano can be played on the new iPad, however, the ad made it seem like the destruction of piano keys, and the human touch involved in creating on it, was unnecessary and needed to be destroyed. Sculptures might be viewed in 3-D design style, but not viewed in real life with the human eyes. And who needs books anymore when you can swipe a “page” on a flat screen?

There is another problem with the new “Crush” ad as well. As digital media moves to censor certain books, films, TV episodes and other forms of content now deemed problematic, the need for physical media is greater than ever. Apple did not just take a subtle jab at physical media and content; it literally destroyed the idea out of existence.

Art and culture may very well be headed for complete virtual-reality viewing in the next decade or so, but perhaps Silicon Valley and tech companies shouldn’t take such obvious elation in it. As controversies surround politically correct AI, and companies focus more on ESG scores than on the preservation of humanity, Apple and Tim Cook seem focused on the former, when there is a real need to prioritize the latter.

Britain is right to stand up to the WHO’s vaccine power grab

The World Health Organisation (WHO) hardly distinguished itself during the Covid 19 pandemic. It was slow to declare an emergency, then tried to make up for the delay by trying to persuade governments to lock down and introduce all kinds of illiberal measures. Worst of all it heaped praise on China’s handling of the epidemic, failing properly to investigate the possibility that the pandemic had originated from a laboratory leak. When it did finally send a team to investigate this, it allowed itself to be pushed around by the Chinese and laughably ruled out the lab leak theory.

None of this, however, has stopped the WHO from trying to get its member states to sign up to a legally -binding agreement as to what should happen in a future pandemic. One of the clauses – which the UK government refuses to agree to – would see rich countries forced to give up 20 per cent of their vaccine supply.

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It is a foolish measure, which assumes that it would be appropriate, say, for Britain to give up a fifth of its vaccine supply at a time when it might be most desperately needed here. That was very much the case during Covid 19. It was rich Western countries, with their ageing populations, which suffered most from the disease. Had we been forced, say in January 2021, to surrender one in five doses to developing countries it would have cost more lives in Britain than it saved in the recipient countries. Other diseases, of course, may well be different. If there was an outbreak of Ebola, for example, we would want to rush a vaccine to tropical countries, where the disease tends to thrive, before treating people in the UK. That wouldn’t just be altruism – it would help us, and indeed the entire world, to concentrate vaccination where it was needed most.

We don’t need to sign a WHO treaty to be good global citizens. We already spend billions on public health in the developing world. But as the government argued, we shouldn’t be surrendering our sovereignty for a measure which may very well prove inappropriate in a future pandemic. It is a power grab too far by the WHO.

Why Gaza and not the Uighurs?

The Babylon Bee, “the newspaper of record” for anyone with a sense of humor, posed a more interesting thought about the campus demonstrations than anything you can find in the New York Times or Washington Post. The Bee’s headline proclaimed, “Uighur Slaves Struggling to Keep Up with Demand for Palestinian Headscarves.”

Dark humor indeed. The headscarves, like the masks, serve one obvious function: they hide the faces of demonstrators. That’s why bank robbers wear masks, too. Students know they are breaking the rules and professional agitators know they are breaking the law, so it’s smart to hide their faces.

But the scarves have one additional advantage that bank robbers’ masks don’t: the keffiyeh is a visible symbol of Palestinian identity. “Pardon me,” they say, “my virtue is showing.”

The Babylon Bee also picked up another interesting point the legacy media missed. The keffiyehs worn on campus today come from China, like so much clothing. Ah, globalization. Palestinians used to produce the scarves themselves but cheaper Chinese production squeezed them out of the market. The protesters’ attire is a hidden mark of the international trade they loath.

Another symbol of that global commerce is the vast number of international students involved in the protests and often leading them. Have you seen objections to that aspect of globalization? No. But then no one ever accused the mob of intellectual coherence.

What is it about Gaza that excites such large, ferocious and often violent demonstrations? Why are there no massive demonstrations about other human-rights atrocities around the world? Why is the campus silent about Hong Kong and the prisons in Siberia? Why such intense focus on Israel, which often bleeds into open antisemitism?

A few reasons top the list. The first is the nature of the hard-left coalition on campus. It centers on two groups, both of which position themselves as righteous victims. The number one domestic victims are African Americans. The number one international victims are Palestinians, plus Muslims more generally. Other victims run the gamut, Native Americans, queers, transgenders and others. White students and increasingly Asian Americans are labeled as the oppressors or victimizers. Their only chance at salvation from their “sin” is to make common cause with the putatively oppressed and follow their lead. Hispanics are rarely part of this coalition, even though their professors are.

The word “sin” is important here. The ideology has the intensity of a religion and the hatred of apostates.

The coalition would crumble if it emphasized positive issues, such as “gay rights in Gaza.” So they focus on common hatreds. Those are what hold the coalition together.

Second, these hatreds have been stoked by the left’s “Long March through the Institutions,” which began with 1960s radicals who became professors and has now permeated K-12 education, both because of the teachers’ ideology and the unions’ political position. The Long March has been extraordinarily successful in achieving its ideological goals.

Israel is a prominent target of that ideology. Why? Because, for the left in the US, Canada and Europe, the Jewish state represents so much they hate, wrapped into a single package: capitalism, nationalism, Western religion and economic prosperity success thanks to hard work, intensive education and merit. Since the state’s formation in the 1948, Israelis have resolutely avoided the self-conception of “victimhood,” on which all campus politics is built.

Had Israel chosen to depict itself as the “wretched of the earth,” it had every right to cloak itself in victimhood. The Holocaust, a true genocide, killed more than 6 million and destroyed European Jewry. Arab states have repeatedly launched wars of annihilation against Israel and expelled virtually all Jews from their territories, where Jews had lived for centuries. The ideological left and their Muslim allies demean those refugees as part of a “settler colonial” influx.

The smear of “settler colonialism” is a staple of every Middle East studies program and has spread through fields such as anthropology, English literature and other humanities. The faculty there were hired by true liberals, several decades ago. Their commitment to diverse viewpoints was not reciprocated by the anti-Israel scholars who came to dominate those departments. Applicants for faculty positions or graduate study would destroy their chances by letting slip that they were Zionists.

American Jews don’t think of themselves as victims, either, even though they suffered discrimination for years. Instead, they have distanced themselves from the path of collective grievance and worked their way up by individual merit. Their success in college admissions came from high SATs and high-school GPAs, after elite universities dropped their anti-Jewish quotas in the mid-1960s. Their very success has made them targets of leftist ideology, which depreciates the concept of “merit” and smears hard-earned success as unearned “privilege,” for which they should feel guilty. Who have they actually oppressed? No one.

Third, the ongoing war in Gaza is visible on cable networks and TikTok, presenting an obvious target for demonstrators. Human-rights violations in most of the word are hidden from view. Seen any Chinese prisons for Uighurs lately? The war in Gaza, on the other hand, receives a lot of media coverage, including disturbing pictures of destroyed homes and larger buildings. It is easy to visualize the people, many of them innocents, who died in that devastation. Though civilian deaths were not Israel’s goal and Israeli Defense Forces have tried hard to avoid them, civilian casualties are inevitable in urban warfare.

Hamas deliberately added to the carnage by occupying civilian structures and using civilians as human shields. It has been a self-conscious strategy for two reasons. First, Hamas knows that civilian casualties add to the anger at Israel. Second, they know Israel may be reluctant to target Hamas structures and gatherings if civilians are present. So they use innocents are part of their strategy to fight the kinetic war on the ground and the cyber war in the media.

Fourth, Hamas has been far more successful than Israel in telling its story — a story that has resonated with students primed by leftist teachers. Since the reporters covering the war don’t have extensive local knowledge or sources, they rely heavily on “stringers” who are closely connected to Palestinian organizations, fear retaliation from Hamas if they don’t hew the terrorists’ line and actually spew casualty figures distributed by a Hamas propaganda organ, which has labeled itself the Health Authority. Did you hear this Health Authority object to terrorists using hospitals as hideouts and shooting galleries? No. Did they object to terror tunnels being dug under those facilities? Of course not. The main goal of the “health authority” is not the population’s wellbeing, it is Hamas’s victory.

The success of Hamas’s media strategy, its eager repetition by progressive media and the lengthening time since the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians have combined to reinforce students’ opposition to Israel.

Fifth, the strong alliance between Washington and Jerusalem gives local protesters a target much closer to home. The US sells weapons to Israel and works closely with its high-technology defense industry for mutual benefit. Since Israel has world-class universities, there are multiple exchange programs for students and faculty. Why don’t many students go to exchange programs in Jordan or Algeria? Name a world-class university there.

These connections between Israel and American universities, corporations, and the government give students a foothold to damn them all as responsible for the war in Gaza. Since hyperbole is the language of these demonstrations, they scream that President Biden is “Genocide Joe.” They say the same about college presidents and provosts. The police are, of course, “pigs.”

It’s the old cry of “Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?” This time the epithets are directed by a new generation at the world’s oldest target: the Jews.

Joe Biden gives in to the Squad

Welcome to Thunderdome. It’s been clear since day one that Joe Biden was more scared of the progressive left than anyone else. His White House was incredibly fearful of a challenge from Bernie Sanders or a Squad member within the 2024 primary and the damage it would do to the Democratic coalition and his own re-election hopes. So the White House swung left — not just on economic policy, where he threw everything behind massive expenditures that pleased leftist politicians, pundits and people who have shrines to FDR in their houses, but on social policy as well, where he embraced the culture war issues of abortion and the trans agenda and hung on tight.

While the decision angers some smart Democrats — James Carville and David Axelrod for instance — with the risk it creates for losing moderate voters, the truth is that Biden’s steps were satisfying his base and not offending upper-class suburbanites who swung away from Trump and Republicans in the 2020 and 2022 elections. Biden has largely held on to them in part because concerns about the economy, the border and crime are more concentrated in the middle and working class — which is why his problems are with black and Hispanic voters in those categories swinging back towards Trump.

Now, though, Biden seems to have created a trifecta of problems that hit every group. For the working and middle class, and particularly voters with young kids, the problems of inflation are felt the most. The price of a McDonald’s cheeseburger is up 215 percent since the end of 2019 — something that may not matter to someone who DoorDashes an everything bagel and a cortado every morning, but definitely matters to a family of four. Grocery prices are in some cases even worse. People want to feel like they are constantly upgrading — if they have to go backwards, getting generic food and heading to discount grocery stores, it’s not going to improve their mood.

For the suburban voters, especially those around blue cities, it’s crime that sticks out to them. What’s the point of living in a ring county where you’re spending a ludicrous amount on taxes for a city you’re scared to enter? Carjackings in Washington, DC nearly doubled in 2023 and cities like New York are bursting at the seams with illegal migrants — not all of them shipped there by Greg Abbott. The border chaos mostly drives Republican voters, but its effect on major cities run by Democratic mayors who promised sanctuary until they actually had to deliver on it offers Biden no help with Independents.

And then there’s foreign policy. This is the realm of more narrow concern, sure, but it hits the upper-class voters most directly. These are people who were definitely anti-Trump and anti-GOP in the past two elections, tuned into the news, fed up with the chaos and diametrically opposed to socially conservative policies. Now Biden’s White House has created something that offends them as well. These are people who had Ukraine flags, and after October 7, Israeli flags too. They are a lot more likely to have Jewish friends. And they are a lot more likely to have as an alma mater, or currently be paying for a son or daughter to attend, a university whose campus is currently being occupied by absolutely nutty protesters. Canceling classes and graduations, taking over buildings, draping George Washington in terrorist garb — this stuff doesn’t fly with the upper class. They are paying a lot for their kid to go to school there, and these protesters are robbing them of the basic pride associated with it.

Biden’s reluctance to say or do anything about this, to just let things burn out, is offensive enough. Now he’s gone a step further, defying Congress’s aid vote and directly undermining Israel. (As one side effect of this, he’s reneged on a deal with Speaker Johnson that effectively ends any ability for them to work together.) And he did it before giving a much-promoted Holocaust Remembrance speech in an effort to get lauded by the press before backstabbing an ally. For supporters of Israel, it reads like hypocrisy and betrayal — and endorsement of the petulant children shouting in megaphones as they act like living, walking, unthinking clichés with a constantly increasing list of demands.

Democrat hopes that Donald Trump will have any court decisions go against him before November (beyond the ludicrous Stormy Daniels trial) are rapidly decaying. His political negatives are baked in. Biden, his White House and his foreign policy team have created a situation where he is surrounded on all sides by obvious failures — and his successes (if you can call them that) appeal to the faction most likely to turn off moderate and Independent voters. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for them.

Veepstakes in full pandermode

It’s going to be fun to watch this play out.

When J.D. Vance went on CNN during the prime time hour last week, he may as well have had an audience of one.

Asked if he had concerns about serving as Donald Trump’s vice president given the hostile relationship the former president had with Mike Pence, Vance strenuously defended Trump. And he downplayed the January 6 riot at the Capitol, when Pence was forced to evacuate the building as rioters called for his hanging.

“Do we blame Donald Trump for every bad thing that’s ever been said by a participant in American democracy?” said Vance. “I think that’s an absurd standard.”

Vance and almost a dozen other vice presidential contenders have flooded cable and network news recently, with an eye toward serving as Trump’s running mate. Perhaps more importantly, Trump and top aides have been closely monitoring what they’ve been doing. As the former president decides whom to pick, he is specifically watching to see what they’re doing to help his campaign, according to a person close to Trump who was granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. The former president is looking at how they perform in news interviews — both in terms of defending him and taking on President Joe Biden — and what steps they are taking to raise money for the campaign and widen Trump’s donor network.

Those familiar with the deliberations say Trump is also examining the various candidates for potential positions in his administration, should he win. On the occasions that prospective vice presidential candidates appear at his rallies, Trump is looking at how they perform as surrogates and how the crowds react to their speeches.

“A number of the top VP prospects are working especially hard and both the president and his team, I am sure, are watching closely,” said Steve Witkoff, a close friend of Trump and Florida real-estate executive. “It makes a big difference when they are helping to raise money and also going into the lion’s den to do the tough work, including voter reach out and interviews on TV.”

The jockeying to be Trump’s No. 2 is ramping up. This past Sunday, a handful of vice presidential contenders, including Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, Florida senator Marco Rubio, South Carolina senator Tim Scott and New York representative Elise Stefanik, fanned out on television programs. Each received strong reviews from the former president’s team, the person said.

One potential VP who was fanning out across television this week was South Dakota governor Kristi Noem — but we know how that went. I think it’s safe to say her chances of being on the ticket are as high as Cricket’s (RIP).

The end of the Tea Party era

FreedomWorks was once one of the most powerful activist think tanks in the country. It was at the center of the Tea Party movement, arguing for small government, against Obamacare, in favor of a kinder, gentler version of libertarian policy agenda on a host of issues and allied with the likes of Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and a host of new Tea Party-backed House members, they drove the conversation in Washington and across the country.

Now, they’re shutting down, effective immediately. Here’s Dave Weigel’s analysis.

The end of FreedomWorks comes a few months after Americans for Prosperity — the other libertarian group created by the 2004 split — abandoned its effort to beat Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary. Neither organization was part of the Republican Party per se. But their retreats confirmed one of the biggest Trump-led changes in the party: The victory of right-wing populism over big-tent libertarianism.

FreedomWorks veterans told me today that the 2023 reboot, backed by polling and demographic research, was doomed by the group’s longtime identification with the conservative movement.

It was stymied when it actually reached out to independents and Democrats, who looked up what the group stood for, and saw stories about its work to elect Republicans (true) and its association with the most-demonized conservative donors in America (false, It was famously born from a 2004 split in the Koch donor network, which backed AFP). The group got too close to Trump and “MAGA-world,” I was told; after the Trump presidency and the 2020 election, that baggage was simply too much for non-Republicans, who’d found plenty of other ways to advocate for “individual liberty.”

Meanwhile, campaigners for “small government” and entitlement reform were losing market share inside the GOP. Libertarians hoped that the Tea Party movement would create a political constituency for across-the-board spending cuts and the dismantling of the administrative state. The Trump administration made big strides on that second priority, rolling back consumer and environmental rules and appointing judges poised to take power away from federal regulators.

But House and Senate Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Trump ruled out any changes to Social Security and Medicare; he won the nomination this year while accusing the AFP-backed Nikki Haley of wanting to rip benefits away from seniors.

Anti-immigration politics, which libertarians winced at, were far more potent. One of the stars of the 9/12/2009 FreedomWorks rally in Washington was Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. On Wednesday, as FreedomWorks closed down, Martin joined House Speaker Mike Johnson at a press conference about legislation that would bar non-citizens from voting – already illegal in federal elections, but a more potent issue for Republicans than entitlement reform.

Hillary cries: ‘Lock Him Up!’

How the turn tables… have turned.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned Thursday that voters might head to the polls this November before former President Donald Trump’s trials are resolved.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee is facing multiple court battles while campaigning in the 2024 election, with some of his trials getting delayed. Clinton argued that if these trials are continually delayed leading up to the election on November 5, it could make it so that voters are not informed of Trump’s charges.

“Justice delayed is justice denied, and the people in our country, it looks as though, will most likely go to vote without knowing the outcome of these other serious trials,” Clinton said. “And the one that is going on now currently in New York is really about election interference. It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”

One more thing

We have a special edition of the Thunderdome podcast this week, and it’s about… a completely different kind of thunderdome. Amber Duke, Ross Anderson and yours truly chat at length about the hit Amazon show Fallout. I hope you’ll tune in. Perhaps we can avoid a nuclear apocalypse yet!

Listen: Houchen turns on Sunak

When it rains for the Tories, it pours. Now Tees Valley’s Conservative mayor Ben Houchen has hit out at his party’s leadership – just 24 hours after yet another Tory MP defected to Labour. The re-elected Conservative mayor this morning admitted the path to Tory electoral victory is ‘getting narrower by the day’ before adding, in more bad news for poor Rishi Sunak, that ‘ultimately it all rests on the shoulders of the leader.’ Talk about trouble in paradise…

In a series of damning remarks made during an interview on BBC Radio Tees today, Houchen seemed rather downcast on the topic of his party’s prospects. ‘Things don’t look great for the Conservative party at the moment,’ he told the station. But while admitting that ‘all responsibility goes back to the top’, the Tees Valley mayor had some home truths for his parliamentary colleagues:

There are lots of people who are involved in the problems with the Conservative party. It’s a bit of chaos at the minute, right, isn’t it? There’s lots of people fighting with each other in the Conservative party, there are defections going on and ultimately the public do not vote for parties who are not united and are not presenting a united front and also aren’t talking to the public. 

If they’re fighting with each other like rats in a sack instead of saying to the public “this is what we’re going to do for you”, that doesn’t win elections. Obviously, it ultimately lies with Rishi but there are lots of people that need to get their act together, stop messing about and start talking to the public about what they can offer them, rather than just fighting with each other.

Oo er. That’s them told. And after today’s polling for the Times that shows Labour now has a 30-point lead on the Tories – the biggest since the Truss era – Houchen will be rather hoping his party’s MPs listen. It’s do or die…

Listen to the clip here: 

Andrew Bailey paves the way for a summer interest rate cut

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has voted to hold interest rates for the sixth time in a row. Members of the MPC voted 7 – 2 to maintain the base rate at 5.25 per cent – with two members voting to cut rates by 0.25 percentage points. This decision will come as no surprise to the markets, which had already factored in a rate hold. The Bank made clear in March that key indicators – including the state of the UK labour market and the risk of inflation rising again – would influence its decision, none of which dramatically changed in the last seven weeks.

The Committee repeats from previous reports that monetary policy must ‘remain restrictive for sufficiently long to return inflation to the 2 per cent target sustainably in the medium term’. Despite the Bank expecting inflation to have fallen back close to target in April (we’ll find on 22nd May), concern remains over persistent inflation in the future. The Bank’s latest forecasts expect inflation to rise again to around 2.5 per cent by the end of the year ‘owing to the unwinding of energy-related base effects’. The Bank remains clear that when rate-cutting begins it is going to be a slow and steady process. The MPC now estimates that the bank rate will decline to 3.75 per cent by the end of its forecast period, 0.5 percentage points higher than forecast in February.

Still, one should note that the Bank’s inflation forecasts have improved slightly from February: Threadneedle Street now expects inflation in two years’ time to sit at 1.9 per cent (just below target), down from its last forecast of 2.3 per cent. Furthermore, the Bank does not expect the inflation rate to rise above 2.6 per cent next year. But this shows just how hawkish the Bank has become: having previously misjudged the inflation crisis so badly, even a slowing inflation rate is not (yet) enough for the Bank to pivot away from a base rate that currently sits at a 16-year high.

However, there remain signs that a rate cut is coming – just not yet. This includes a shift in voting. While the MPC’s members firmly came down on the side of holding rates, two members voted for a cut this time, compared to one member back in March. The case for a 0.25 percentage point cut, as made in today’s report, is largely linked to the gradual cooling of the labour market: job vacancies continue to fall and nominal pay hikes continue to slow. 

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And while the Committee emphasised multiple times that rates must remain restrictive for some time, it also noted again that ‘the stance of monetary policy could remain restrictive even if Bank Rate were to be reduced, given that it was starting from an already restrictive level.’ In other words, a slow and steady rate cut is seen as compatible with keeping inflation under control.

‘We’re now getting back to more normal times’ the Bank’s governor Andrew Bailey said, following this afternoon’s rate announcement. ‘We need to see more evidence that inflation will stay low before we can cut interest rates,’ he remarked, while adding ‘I’m optimistic that things are moving in the right direction.’ The Governor’s comments have already been interpreted as a hint that a summer rate cut is coming, but whether that’s delivered at the meeting in June or August will have big implications – not least for the government, which is banking on economic improvements this summer that allow voters to feel a bit better off.

The Bank did firmly hint at one improvement – not on rates, but on economic growth. Today’s minutes forecast that ‘UK GDP is expected to have risen by 0.4 per cent in 2024 Q1 and to grow by 0.2 per cent in Q2’ – all but confirming tomorrow’s growth update, which is expected to show that the UK left recession behind in 2023.

In Putin’s Russia, Victory Day is no longer about 1945

Stepping out onto Red Square for today’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, it was clear to see that Vladimir Putin was in a good mood. Arms swinging with almost comic vigour as he walked, he sat down in the stands above Lenin’s mausoleum with a smug smile on his face. The pathetic fallacy of the flurries of snow on this uncharacteristically cold day were not going to interfere with his glee.

The Russian president has reason to be cheerful: two days ago, he indulged in his fifth inauguration ceremony in the Kremlin, handing himself another six years in power. The war in Ukraine is currently working in his favour; Ukraine has been struggling with a lack of troops, weapons and funding that has made repelling the advancing Russian troops increasingly difficult. 

Putin has always enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of Victory Day. As much as they may wish not to, the eyes of the world turn for an hour or so to Red Square – it is a day on which the Russian president knows he has the attention not just of Russians, but his enemies and allies across the globe.

As such, exactly two years ago today, just three months after Putin invaded Ukraine, the world was offered its first glance at the lens through which he viewed the conflict he had begun: ridding Ukraine of ‘Neo fascists’; defending Russia’s history and ‘traditional values’ against the threat of Nato and the West more generally. These are themes Putin has returned to time after time in the many speeches he has given since. 

Today, with two years of practice, those hateful themes ripened to maturity. ‘Today we see how the memory of the second world war is being distorted,’ Putin launched in. ‘Revanchism, mockery of history, the desire to justify the current followers of the Nazis are part of the general policy of Western elites to incite more and more regional conflicts,’ he fumed. By now, the Russian public understand these references perfectly well – there is no need for Putin to provide rambling explanations. 

Ironically, though, Putin then launched into the exact revanchism of which he had just complained. Claiming the West would ‘like to forget the lessons of the second world war’, he stated: ‘The first three long, difficult years of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union and all the republics of the former Soviet Union fought the Nazis almost one on one, while almost all of Europe worked for the military power of the Wehrmacht.’

This is a regurgitation of the Soviet narrative of the second world war, which conveniently chose to forget that until 1941 the USSR was allied with Nazi Germany under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It was only the point at which Hitler turned on Stalin in 1941 that the Soviet Union liked to consider the formal beginning of the conflict. Far from working for Hitler, by that time most of Europe lay under Nazi occupation. Putin repeated this narrative with the aim of reinforcing his own message: that once again it is Russia against the world – only this time in Ukraine. 

This year’s Victory Day parade is a useful milestone for recognising the extent to which Russia has now slipped into what could reasonably be called a military dictatorship. The display of power provided by 9,000 frogmarching troops, all saluting Putin, is designed as an outward projection of the president’s own power. Although nominally a memorial day celebrating Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, Putin has usurped the day’s meaning: Victory Day has now become inextricably linked with the war in Ukraine. The day now provides Putin’s rule with purpose and meaning.

Less can be said of the power of the weaponry that trundled through Red Square after Putin’s speech finished. For the second year in a row, the Russian army was able to spare just one tank for the parade: an 80 year old T-34. The rest are clearly tied up on the Ukrainian front. In total, just over 60 pieces of military equipment took part in the parade, including Iskander and Yars missile systems and Tiger, Kamaz and Ural armoured vehicles. A fly-by of 15 jets wrapped up the seven-minute procession (much shorter than in pre-war times), painting the sky over St Basil’s Cathedral in the colours of the Russian flag. While the Russian air force has experienced difficulties getting through Ukraine’s anti-aircraft protections, today’s display suggests they still have plenty of aircraft at their disposal.

Despite Putin’s assurances that ‘we are confident that together we will ensure a free, safe future for Russia, our united people!’, the bravado seen in Russia’s capital has seemingly failed to trickle through the rest of the country. According to the Kremlin-critical Russian language TV channel TV Rain, 54 local authorities refused to hold their own parades for fear of being targeted by Ukrainian-sympathetic drone attacks. Many towns have reportedly cancelled their traditional evening firework displays for similar reasons. 

Over two years into the war in Ukraine, Russia’s Victory Day no longer truly celebrates the genuine triumph over fascism seen in 1945. The irony of the fascistic state Putin has cultivated in Russia is something he cares little for. With the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war approaching next year, the Russian president will only use it as another opportunity to paint himself as the isolated crusader out to save the world against itself.

Labour celebrate largest poll lead since Truss

Poor Rishi Sunak is not having a very good week. After a bruising set of local elections and two defections to Labour in a fortnight, the latest Times poll won’t do anything to settle the Prime Minister’s nerves as the general election looms. Labour now has a staggering 30 point lead over the Tories — the biggest since the Liz Truss era — according to the latest YouGov data. To add insult to injury, the poll also finds that most voters are unconvinced by Sunak’s claim that Britain is not heading for a Labour majority government. Bad luck, Rishi…

Today’s poll is officially the worst set of results for the Prime Minister since he started in the top job. The beleaguered Tories sit on a measly 18 per cent while Sir Keir’s Starmtroopers are miles ahead on a whopping 48 per cent. All the smaller parties, with the exception of the SNP, meanwhile see a small dip in support. The Lib Dems and the Greens are down by one percentage point each since the end of April, with Reform dropping two points to 13 per cent. The Nats, however, have jumped up by whole percentage point. It appears hapless Humza did more for their prospects in resigning than while he was First Minister…  

Sunak is keen to talk up the prospects of a Tory comeback after last week’s locals but the people on the ground don’t buy it. Just over an eighth of voters are convinced that the UK is on track for a hung parliament, while two-thirds are expecting a Labour majority. For Rishi Sunak, it seems, things can only get bitter.

Labour MPs need to grow up

Westminster is full of clever people who spend a lot of time stupidly making simple things complicated. The story of Nathalie Elphicke’s defection to Labour is a case in point.

This is a simple story, or should be. Someone who used to tell voters to vote Conservative is now telling voters to vote Labour. It’s more proof that the Tories are finished and Labour is the party that represents the biggest share of the electorate. End of story.

Yet the undisciplined and self-indulgent reactions from many parts of the Labour party risk telling a very different story: that not everyone is welcome in Labour – and if you think the wrong things, we don’t want you or your vote.

Those Labour reactions are splashed across the papers today and may yet filter through to the wider electorate. There’s certainly enough material to sustain news coverage that could stick in the minds of some voters. Half the PLP seems to have spent Wednesday afternoon messaging lobby correspondents to explain how much it offends their sensibilities to share oxygen with someone they disagree with.

I use that word ‘indiscipline’ very deliberately. Many Labour reactions to the Elphicke announcement suggest it is a party that really won’t enjoy a full-blown general election campaign.

A successful election campaign requires message discipline and a consistent, open offer to as many voters as possible. Feeding headlines telling the public that some people aren’t welcome in Labour meets neither of those conditions.

Nothing I’ve just written constitutes endorsement of Elphicke’s views. She has undoubtedly done and said things with which I disagree. Her defence of a convicted sex offender (her ex-husband) was egregious. I don’t think I’d like to invite her round for dinner.

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But there is a significant difference between our social preferences and the business of winning elections. In accepting Elphicke into Labour, Keir Starmer shows that he has grasped this distinction. He understands that winning elections comes down to getting more votes than the other side, and that the best way to do that is by turning their voters into your voters.

This is one of those simple truisms of politics that Westminster often makes very complicated. But it really matters. David Cameron used to speak privately of how dreadful it was to be a Tory leader facing Tony Blair, because of Blair’s relentless focus on turning Tories into Labour voters: ‘Every morning, I would wake up thinking, “what’s that bloody man done to take away my voters now?”’

There are countless differences between Starmer and Blair, but Starmer is the first Labour leader since Blair to show a similar determination to move voters from Con to Lab. His acceptance of Elphicke is proof of it.

Yet the reactions from elsewhere in Labour suggest a party and a movement that has not fully accepted that approach. ‘We have to be choosy to a degree about who we allow to join our party,’ said Neil Kinnock, a former leader venerated in Labour for losing not one but two general elections. (Labour’s views of former leaders are always telling: Kinnock, like his fellow election-losers Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, will always be more popular in the party than the most successful leader in Labour history.)

The risk for Labour now is that the hostile reaction to Elphicke’s defection becomes the story, the message that voters take away from this week. That risk is especially acute because of Elphicke’s seat – Dover.

Dover is the frontline of the small boats debate and while I think the small boats issue is stupid and reductive and a huge mistake by Rishi Sunak, it is something that can hurt Labour if the Conservatives can successfully persuade some voters that Labour doesn’t care about secure borders and dislikes people who do.

Scorning the MP for Dover because she has harsh opinions about illegal immigration is very bad politics for Labour, since it creates a chance for Conservatives to tell voters who also worry about illegal immigration that Labour scorns them too. Remember Gordon Brown and Mrs Duffy, anyone?

If Keir Starmer is prime minister after the next election, he’ll have done something remarkable – leading Labour from the disaster of the 2019 election to victory in one term would be an unprecedented feat. 

His successes to date have been built in part on an often unheralded organisational transformation of his party. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the list of Labour PPCs in winnable seats and their messaging. Both show how effectively Starmer’s team have imposed discipline on the selection of the party’s future MPs and those candidates’ public utterances.

That discipline is always hard to impose on Labour, because the party has a long tradition of prizing sentiment, often more highly than political success. Hence that love for election-losing leaders, and hence the significant number of MPs who think that expressing their feelings about Elphicke (and being seen to do so) matters more than the message their party sends to the sort of voters who agree with her. 

The odds are that the Elphicke row will be a minor bump in the road as Starmer rolls on towards victory. But his reshaping of the party still has a long way to go. Labour’s leader has a clear-eyed and unsentimental focus on power, but his colleagues’ reactions to that defection suggest a party that is not yet emotionally ready for the compromises of government.

Apple’s tone deaf advert shows the tech firm is losing its way

Apple has a reputation for advertising that not only sells their products effectively, but sets a standard few of their competitors could ever hope to attain. Their famous advert for the Mac, which launched forty years ago, was directed by Ridley Scott, fresh from Blade Runner, and channelled Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to thrilling and iconic effect. But this genius for marketing makes their latest, much-castigated promotional film for the new iPad, ‘Create’, both bewildering and disturbing. It is utterly inexplicable that their highly-paid teams of marketing experts and PRs would ever have believed it to be a good idea.

In the clip, which (subconsciously or otherwise) pays homage to Scott’s early advert, many accoutrements of human endeavour, from musical instruments and books to artworks and arcade games, are placed on a platform and slowly crushed, being transformed into nothing more than a paint-oozing mess. The advert, which is soundtracked by Sonny and Cher’s incongruously jaunty ‘All I Ever Need is You’, is designed to showcase the new iPad Pro, Apple’s thinnest ever product. The idea behind it is that this single product will double up as typewriter, music creator, book, camera and a great deal more. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, hopes that his company’s single, hugely expensive and sophisticated, offering will become the only thing that you need at home.

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Unsurprisingly, there has been an outcry. Hugh Grant – always good value on social media – tweeted: ‘The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley’. Filmmaker Asif Kapadia wrote that ‘[I] like iPads but don’t know why anyone thought this ad was a good idea. It is the most honest metaphor for what tech companies do to the arts, to artists musicians, creators, writers, filmmakers: squeeze them, use them, not pay well, take everything then say it’s all created by them.’ Others said that it plays like a grim inversion of the previous Apple advertisement, as if the forces of Big Brother had triumphed and that all individuality had, quite literally, been crushed. Swap all your books, musical instruments and artworks for one anonymous piece of gleaming metal and glass, and pay handsomely for the privilege.

It is hard not to avoid the feeling that Apple, for so long the world’s leading and most admired technological company, has lost its way. Whether they are sinking hundreds of millions into commercial flops like Matthew Vaughn’s Argyll to promote their TV offering, or releasing new updates to their iconic products like the iPhone that have largely been met with a shrug by the general public, the sense is growing that the company’s Midas touch is increasingly tarnished. Whispers that it has never quite been the same since its visionary founder Steve Jobs died in 2011 have persisted. In the past few years, the business has brought the old adage to mind that their work may be both good and original, but what is good is not original and what is original is not good.

It would be astonishing if the ‘Crush’ advertisement remained in circulation for very long. Perhaps Apple will issue an apologetic statement suggesting they screwed up. But whatever they do, it will be hard to avoid the feeling that it’s too little, too late.

Orwell famously suggested that the dystopian future he depicted consisted of ‘a boot, stamping on a human face, forever’. Imagine the same face being continually hit with an iPad Pro, and you have Apple’s very own vision of such a future. Steve Jobs’s most famous slogan for his company was ‘Think Different’. They have now, indeed, thought differently, and you can only imagine him revolving in his grave at such a travesty of his legacy.

Why a disabled pedestrian had her cyclist manslaughter conviction quashed

A woman who shouted and waved at a cyclist, causing her to fall in front of a car, has had her manslaughter conviction overturned. Auriol Grey, who has cerebral palsy and is partially blind, was jailed for three years in 2023, following the incident in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. But yesterday, the court of appeal overturned the 50-year-old’s conviction; her lawyers said she was a vulnerable pedestrian who ‘should never have been charged’. Grey’s family responded by saying ‘we hope lessons will be learned.’

This is a tragic case in which there are no winners. In October 2020, Grey was walking along a pavement when a 77-year-old cyclist, Celia Ward, attempted to pass her. CCTV footage showed that, rather than seeking to get out of the way, Grey gesticulated at Ward, shouting ‘get off the fucking pavement’. Ward subsequently fell off her bike into the road and into the path of a car. The driver had no chance to stop, or take evasive action. Ward sustained catastrophic injuries. Sadly, she died at the scene.

A prosecution for what is known as unlawful act manslaughter was brought against Grey and, following a retrial, she was convicted and sent to prison. During the course of the trial and sentencing, the judge indicated that her actions were not explained by her disability.

The prosecution case was that the ‘hostile reaction’ by Grey to Ward cycling on the pavement was unlawful. It had caused Ward to fall off her bike and into the carriageway, resulting in her death. The words ‘get off the fucking pavement’ were said to have characterised Grey’s mindset of ‘hostility to cyclists riding on pavements.’

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While the evidence showed that Grey had gesticulated or waved at Ward, there was no evidence that she had actually pushed, or in any way touched her.

Pedestrians and cyclists may have had shared access to the pavement in question, although the Court of Appeal noted that remarkably that fact ‘was never clearly established one way or another at trial.’

Grey appealed against her conviction. At the appeal hearing, the central question was whether any unlawful act (sometimes called a ‘base offence’) had occurred to cause Ward’s death. The appellant’s team argued that neither the trial judge, nor the parties, had identified any such act during the trial and that no such base offence had been proven. Accordingly, the defence team said that ‘the factual elements which were left to the jury were insufficient in law for a conviction for manslaughter to follow.’

In response, the barrister for the Crown contended that the jury had been directed by the trial judge in such a way that they would have naturally concluded that Grey had committed a common assault (the relevant ‘base offence’) which had led to the death. He therefore argued that the conviction was not unsafe.

The Court of Appeal judgment acknowledged that Ward’s death ‘was a tragedy and the circumstances of it were horrific.’ It also recognised the huge distress caused to her family and the fact that the death had merited a proper investigation of any criminal responsibility. Nonetheless, the judgment, which was delivered  by Dame Victoria Sharpe (the President of the King’s Bench Division), highlighted the fact that had Ward not died, it was ‘inconceivable that the appellant would ever have been charged with assault in circumstances where it could not be established that she had made any physical contact with the cyclist.’

The judgment also noted that the trial judge’s legal directions to the jury had ‘contained fundamental and material misdirections of law.’ Dame Victoria concluded that the prosecution case had been insufficient even to be left to the jury and that:

‘In all the circumstances, we have no hesitation in concluding that the appellant’s conviction for manslaughter is unsafe.’

Having quashed the conviction, the Court of Appeal refused an application to allow the Crown to retry the case. While the case does not set any significant new legal precedent, people will no doubt seek to learn lessons from the outcome. Grey spent a year in prison and her family has argued that vulnerable people need better support from the justice system.

At the time of the incident, the police argued that road users needed to ‘take care and be considerate of each other’. The case triggered a furious online debate between cyclists and pedestrians. Following the judgment, Grey’s legal team said that the accident would never have happened if a cycle path had been in place separating vulnerable pedestrians from cyclists.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that not every tragedy merits a criminal prosecution. The criminal law cannot always ascribe guilt, even in circumstances where a person’s actions contribute to a calamity. However much people may look for someone to blame, sometimes an accident is simply an accident. Prosecutors should not forget that fact, even where they are put under pressure for something to be done in the light of a catastrophic event.

Inside the Labour backlash over Keir Starmer’s latest Tory recruit

Has Keir Starmer made a tactical mistake by recruiting the Tory MP Natalie Elphicke as his latest Starmtrooper? That’s the question being asked in Westminster after the Labour leader unveiled the Tory defector as a Labour MP just before Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. The Dover MP crossed the floor using a statement to say that the Tories had become a ‘byword for incompetence and division’. Starmer meanwhile spoke of his delight, arguing that it shows Labour is now ‘the party of the national interest’. A photo of the duo was put out with the pair all smiles. The defection is less than a fortnight after Labour celebrated Dan Poulter turning his back on the Conservatives.

In both instances, Tory MPs were quick to see red and criticise their former colleagues. As one Tory MP said to me of Elphicke’s defection: ‘It would have made more sense if she went to Reform. She’s gender critical, anti-woke, very right on tax, obviously very right on immigration. She thinks Starmer is a muppet – or at least she did very recently’. This is similar to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s reaction expressing bafflement at the move on GB News on Wednesday night:

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‘I couldn’t believe that Natalie, who was a hard right, tough on migration member of the European Research Group – it was the most extraordinary thing for her to do. It doesn’t make any sense at all. She should have joined Reform. I mean, if she joined Reform, there would have been some logic to it. She might actually agree with Reform. But if you look at all her statements over all the time she has been in Parliament, she does not agree with the Labour Party. Dr. Dan Poulter was a different wing of the party, he never really had very strong beliefs on anything very much as far as I could tell. Nobody saw him again today. He hasn’t been around a great deal.’

While Labour MPs and Rees-Mogg don’t agree on much they do share some thoughts on Elphicke. What is most striking since Starmer unveiled his new hire is the level of unhappiness in the Labour party.

Speaking on Peston last night, former Labour frontbencher Jess Phillips said she ‘didn’t believe it at first’ and had discovered it from a Tory MP. There is particular discomfort among several female Labour MPs over comments Elphicke made after her ex-husband, former Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, was accused of sexual assault. Following his conviction, she said he was ‘attractive, and attracted to women’ thereby making him an ‘easy target’.

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has criticised the move saying the party ought to be ‘choosy to a degree about who we allow to join our party’. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves previously told Ephicke to ‘f— off’ after she criticised England footballer Marcus Rashford for missing a penalty. As one Labour figure said to me last night: ‘I can see what they’re trying to do but I doubt it will end well’.

The view in Starmer’s inner circle is that this is a win: it destabilises Sunak, reduces his majority and keeps up the idea his party is a sinking ship. Even if Tory MPs won’t depose the PM, his party is in a state of decline. Elphicke’s constituency is also a key seat (the Starmtrooper Mike Tapp – a former soldier – will be the candidate at the election, with Elphicke stepping down then) they want to win and it is also at the centre of the small boats issue. Therefore the one-time Tory candidate backing Starmer on stopping boats (despite her many criticisms previously of his position) ought to help Labour send a message to these voters.

But Elphicke’s defection comes at a time when Labour MPs are spooked by a threat from the Green party following the locals. Some are questioning what their party stands for and the decision to welcome Elphicke does more to worry Starmer’s flock than help Labour’s path to power.

Nadhim Zahawi standing down as Tory MP

Will the last Tory MP to leave please turn out the lights? Nadhim Zahawi today becomes the 67th Conservative to announce they are standing down at the next election. The former Chancellor – who has held nine different ministerial posts – announced the decision on Twitter/X this morning. ‘My mistakes have been mine,’ he wrote in a lengthy statement, declaring that:

The time is right for a new, energetic Conservative to fight for the honour of representing Stratford-on-Avon and assuming the mantle of MP for Shakespeare. Parting is such sweet sorrow. I would like to thank all of my parliamentary staff and colleagues, civil service officials, special advisers, and everyone else who has ever given me advice, praise, or kept me in check with criticism. My mistakes have been mine, and my successes have come from working with, and leading, amazing people.

Zahawi is just the latest in a growing number of senior Conservative MPs who have announced they are standing down at the next election, including Theresa May, Dominic Raab, Kwasi Kwarteng and Sajid Javid. With more Conservative MPs standing down than at any point since Labour’s landslide in 1997, the question is: who is going to be left to go out and sell Rishi Sunak’s party on the doorstep?

Why the Bank of England must cut interest rates

As the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) announces its interest rate decision today it has the chance to reverse the damage caused by its interest rate hikes. Rates have been fixed at 5.25 per cent since last August and the Bank has stubbornly refused to cut them. We’re all paying the price.

The truth is that inflation is lower and has fallen much faster than the Bank used as its justification for raising rates. In August, the Bank’s model indicated that, even with interest rates raised to 5.25 per cent, inflation would be 5 per cent last year. It was actually 4 per cent. As late as November last year, the Bank forecast that it would be the end of 2025 before inflation returned to 2 per cent. It is now widely expected that will happen much earlier than the Bank forecast.

Those final rate rises were clearly an error. So the least one might expect the Bank to have done by now is to reverse the rises. Yet that has not happened. Rates have been left unchanged since last August. Indeed, it is not even certain, by any means, that the Bank will cut rates today – even though inflation is already falling.

What could explain this caution about rate cuts? The most obvious interpretation is that the Bank is being wary about risking cutting rates too early because it is widely regarded as having got things wrong when rates were rising. It did not predict the large inflation rise in 2022; it waited too long to start hiking rates as inflation took off, and it raised rates too slowly once it properly got going.

It is understandable that the Bank is now overcompensating by being extra cautious about lowering rates too soon in case inflation persists or rises again. It is natural not to want to make the same mistake twice. It is also understandable that, given that the Bank’s models failed to predict inflation going so high, there might be a concern that future projections for inflation are likewise under-predicting its levels. The Bank recently commissioned Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, to review its forecasting models and he identified several weaknesses that are presumably in the process of being remedied.

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There is, however, no deep mystery as to why inflation rose or why it is now falling. Part of the rise was, of course, a consequence of sudden energy price rises, especially those associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But most of the rise resulted from one of the longest-established principles in all economics: if the money supply rises rapidly, then inflation will be higher. 

The relationship between the money supply and inflation is complex. Changes in the amount of money circulating in the economy do impact inflation, but the precise timing and magnitude of this effect can vary. This makes it challenging for central banks to precisely control inflation (to the nearest few decimal points) by adjusting the money supply, such as through Quantitative Easing (‘printing money’). In fact, small deviations from trend growth in the money supply might not affect inflation at all if inflation expectations remain stable and the economy can absorb the extra money without prices rising.

Further complicating matters, if a central bank tries to target a specific measure of money supply growth, people may change their behaviour in ways that make that measure less meaningful. For example, they might start using, effectively as money, forms of money and credit that aren’t captured by the targeted measure. In the 1970s and 1980s this frustrated some monetarist economists who thought central banks could fine-tune the economy by controlling one or other particular measure of the money supply. In practice, the money supply has proven difficult to precisely define and control.

Yet, for all that, the big picture remains: annual growth in broad money, over time, of around 5 per cent (or perhaps a little below) has been consistent with the UK’s 2 per cent inflation target. If the Bank induces the money supply to grow much faster than that – the 15 per cent money supply growth in early 2021, for example – then it should be expected that, with a lag of perhaps 18 months to three years, inflation will go far above target, probably into double figures – as indeed happened in late 2022. If the Bank induces the money supply to contract, or to grow much more slowly than 5 per cent, inflation will – again after a lag – be below target. And if the contraction becomes large enough and sustained enough, there may even be deflation.

Broad money contracted from late 2022 to late 2023, and for much of the rest of the period since late 2022, growth has been far below 5 per cent. So it should be no surprise if inflation is below target, and we should expect that below-target inflation will persist for some time.

Instead of attempting to over-correct for past errors, the Bank should heed the monetary signals and respond by immediately cutting rates. The Institute of Economic Affairs’ Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, has recommended an immediate cut of 0.5 per cent. The inclusion of experts on monetary economics in the MPC would bring much-needed intellectual diversity to a committee that has been lacking in it recent years. But in the meantime, the Bank should see sense on interest rates – and cut them.

Dr Andrew Lilico is chair of the IEA’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee and Principal at Europe Economics

Appalachia’s stalled revival

State officials and nonprofit leaders often chatter about economic diversification and a just transition for Appalachia. But old habits die hard. Many still dream of large factories and firms returning to the region, bringing economic wealth — and tax revenue. 

The divide between smokestack chasers and economic diversifiers has an extra urgency as the federal government directs more money into the region than they have in decades. But the diversification versus big business divide threatens to squander the money from federal legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Swinging for the fences promises the revival of a golden era, when Appalachia was dotted with coal mines and factories. But this persistent belief in mega-projects coming back to the region has notched up few successes in recent years. It also undermines small and medium-sized businesses that already exist in the region and could lead diversification efforts. When leaders stay focused on a big employer, they make unforced errors. 

Take Virginia, where the Buckhannon County Board of Supervisors has focused on building the Bluestone Regional Business and Technology Park. It’s pocketed $13 million from grants and Virginia’s Tobacco Commission to fund it.  

But after years of the complex sitting empty, a machinery company was turned away when it wanted to open there. The board pigeonholed the park as being “tech-only,” said Amanda Killen, the new economy program coordinator for Appalachian Voices. 

The 680-acre park was completed in 2011 but sat empty until getting its first tenant in 2021 — a bait manufacturer, helped by a $400,000 loan from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority. 

Now locals are grumbling about Project Jonah, a salmon farm announced in 2013 as “the world’s largest vertically integrated indoor aquaculture facility.” State Delegate Will Morefield called it “the type of transformational project that we will use on an international level to attract other companies to Southwest Virginia.” 

The $228 million project has received more than $6 million in federal and local grants. Another $10 million could come from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority if it hits hiring and investment benchmarks, on top of millions more in county loans to the company. Tazewell County would also need to spend $8 million for water system improvements. 

“They’re always very proud to do a press release and say ‘hey, we’re doing this thing, here it comes,’” Killen said. “And then it doesn’t happen. That happens over and over.” 

Officials have assured the public the Project Jonah lives, with an expected completion date of 2025 or 2026. 

Project Jonah, it should be noted, grew out of a 2013 trip to Israel that Delegate Morefield took “to look for economic opportunities for Southwest Virginia,” according to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. 

For many officials, the temptation of a moonshot to revive the rural remains irresistible. The moonshot mindset, though, gets economic development backwards. Rural areas don’t need politico-economic gurus directing growth. What they need is the entrepreneurial spirit. 

“So much of where I think conventional economic revitalization discussions have fallen short is they tend to be very top-down and they tend to exclude or not recognize the vital role that entrepreneurship plays,” said John Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group. 

EIG’s research focuses on economic dynamism and the roots of innovation. “Entrepreneurship is one of the signal indicators of economic potential in a community, and anything that is not fundamentally involving entrepreneurship as a path forward is not likely to succeed,” Lettieri said. 

Gambling with taxpayer money is easy. As more federal cash flows into Appalachia’s overlooked hills, it may encourage hubris more than profit. 

“There’s an incredible overconfidence among policymakers about how, by pushing this or that button, you can engineer outcomes that are hard to achieve,” Lettieri said. “There’s always this idea that through policy we’ll generate a big boost of entrepreneurship — and it’s a laudable goal — but so much of it is about creating the pre-conditions in which entrepreneurs can do the thing that they do without needing the government.” 

Creating that environment for growth is much more abstract than luring in a new business with tax credits and subsidies — which is part of the problem. Politicians can’t resist a big project. But that effort crowds out an existing small business that needs legal barriers removed to grow. When it’s harder to start or grow a business at home, people leave. 

Though rarely lauded as a business-friendly place now, Lettieri noted that one of the advantages California had in becoming a tech hub was that it doesn’t enforce non-compete agreements. Beyond a friendly business environment, the basics matter: good or decent schools, safe neighborhoods, reliable and fast internet service. 

“People try to outsmart themselves on this stuff and they want to skip ahead to some boutique strategy,” Lettieri said. “If you haven’t attended to those local rules, regulations and infrastructure, what are you doing wasting your time thinking about economic strategies? You don’t even have the conditions for a functioning, thriving economy.” 

But, even if rural Appalachia fixes the fundamentals, these communities might have a bigger problem that limits growth. Southern Appalachia may be all right, but for the north, structural forces are against them. 

“The demographics in these places are already bad. Once something starts declining, this is America — it’s like, peace out, we’re gone,” Aaron Renn said.  

Renn, a consultant and writer, produced a report for the Urban Reform Institute on Appalachia’s future and noticed a divergence between the region’s northern and southern parts, divided along the Kentucky-Virginia and Tennessee-North Carolina border. 

Southern Appalachia, thanks to the Sun Belt boom, has gained population and jobs. Northern Appalachia has struggled. 

“North Appalachia lost 17,131 people in total, while south Appalachia gained 127,585,” Renn wrote. “While the north posted positive net domestic in-migration of 22,563, the south tallied almost 300,000 — thirteen times as high. The story is similar for jobs, with the north losing 227,049 positions since the pre-pandemic year of 2019, while the south actually exceeded its pre-Covid levels by 66,377.” 

The south has benefited from sprawl that’s sent residents from Atlanta, Charlotte and Knoxville into Appalachia, Renn noted, but the north is more remote from the metros. 

The places that have gained the most from remote work seem to be the suburbs — and southern Appalachia has seen more gains from that pattern than the north. Perhaps rural areas need more competent governance rather than top-down economic planning. 

“What’s notable about growth in south Appalachia is that it is happening organically — through market forces, not policy interventions,” Renn wrote. “Numerous attempts have been made to try to revive the northern Rust Belt, to little avail. That region’s fortunes seem to be deeply tied to structural forces not easily overcome.” 
 
The leaders who would start businesses, run county government and lead volunteer projects may be more in tune to those shifts — and more willing to leave when decline hits. 
 
The least entrepreneurial people are the ones who stay, Renn said.  

“You start adding it up — I’m not predicting a great rural turnaround,” he said. “Again, there’s places that’ll do OK, but I think yeah, we’re gonna have declining rural populations, declining rural influence, et cetera. I don’t see how we turn that around.”  

Fewer people, fewer entrepreneurs — at least state parks don’t fit in a U-Haul. Though some assets can’t leave, if big cities are too far away, fewer people will visit, too. Some rural parts have grown thanks to outdoor recreation, but its success can hinge on how easy the commute is from the nearest metropole. The magnificent views and charming towns may not bring economic benefits after all. 

“They’re very, very dependent on these large urban population centers,” said Bynum Boley, director of the University of Georgia’s Tourism Research Lab. “If you look at who’s going on these vacations to national parks, it’s mostly people living in urban areas… I don’t think there’s any short-term fix for these big changes that are happening in these areas.” 

Though policymakers can’t control the furies, these structural forces that favor the south and west over the north and east, some officials want to force a change in the status quo.  

Leaders cloistered away in state capitals and DC can break many things by accident and create plenty of barriers. The track record of state and federal governments to turn around areas in decline isn’t exactly flawless.  

And even when they try, the results are underwhelming. 

The EPA, for instance, has a Recreation Economy for Rural Communities program to offer planning assistance for developing outdoor rec in small towns — but only thirty-five places have benefited since its creation in 2019. The impact may simply be too small, even if it spurs some economic or quality-of-life gains. 

Similarly, a congressional bill to revitalize rurals areas would create a fund for outdoor rec and economic development — but it would have an annual budget of $50 million.  

Competition for those small-scale federal grants might guide the attention of policymakers to places that have it together, but it might also obscure the promise of other places. A business that gets a state subsidy is not always an industry leader. 

Renn, who warns of the structural challenges facing the region, is not advocating for desertion. “The prospects for Appalachia are far brighter than widely assumed,” he wrote. The region is filled with locals experimenting and pioneering for a better future. 
 
It should also be noted that the data, aggregated by the Appalachian Regional Commission, show that poverty in Appalachia is falling, educational achievement is improving and median household income has gone up by 10 percent between 2012-2016 and 2017-2021. But revival will be uneven. 

It’s tempting for legislators, ever campaigning for reelection, to look for a big win. Getting a big factory or distribution center gives them a way to claim they “created” thousands of jobs. But the hard work of revival is less flashy, hidden away in the details. Going deeper will mean accepting complexity.  

What’s most needed are politicians who want to make life easier on small, existing businesses to grow organically, rather than looking for a hail-mary megaproject.