Where is the solidarity with Guyana?

On Monday, the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), the environmentalist group Just Stop Oil (JSO), the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG), which is a group of ‘Corbynite’ MPs, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, held a joint press conference. With differences in emphasis, they all strongly condemned the moves of Venezuela’s dictator-president Nicolas Maduro to annex the Essequibo region of neighbouring Guyana. 

‘The last thing the world needs right now is another imperialist war for oil’, a StWC spokesman said. JSO were particularly dismayed by Maduro’s announcement that he would immediately ‘grant operating licenses for the exploration and exploitation of oil, gas and mines in the entire area of our Essequibo’. The SCG said they felt compelled to speak out, because Maduro continued to insist on calling himself a ‘socialist’, a label which, according to the SCG, he had forfeited any right to use. 

The press conference was followed by a ‘Solidarity with Guyana’ march from Parliament Square to the Venezuelan embassy, where activists waved Guyana flags, and held up banners condemning Maduro.

You have probably guessed by now that none of this happened. I just made it up. There was, of course, no press conference, no ‘solidarity march’, or any other kind of condemnation of Maduro’s ‘Greater Venezuela’ plans from Britain’s socialists.

But why not? These types are usually not shy to take sides in foreign policy conflicts, and this one has all the hallmarks of the kind of conflict they normally get excited about. 

Last Sunday, Maduro held a referendum on the question of whether Venezuela should annex Essequibo. Only about one in ten potential voters bothered to turn up, but among this small ‘selectorate’, almost everyone said yes. Maduro proceeded to distribute new maps of Venezuela, which include Essequibo, and more importantly, he ramped up military presence at the border. 

Granted, the border dispute did not start with Maduro. In theory, Venezuela has always been laying claim to Essequibo. But this dispute had been dormant for decades before Maduro chose to rekindle it. Even Maduro’s predecessor and political idol Hugo Chavez, who was fond of mixing his socialist rhetoric with fervent nationalism, never showed much interest in the region. Nor did Maduro himself, in his previous role as Chavez’s Foreign Minister. 

So why now, all of a sudden? 

When western governments or their allies are involved in foreign policy conflicts, western progressives are usually quick to suspect economic motives behind it. This stems not just from a general distrust of western governments, and Britain and America in particular. It is also an application of Lenin’s idea that ‘imperialism’ is ‘the highest stage of capitalism’.

Although I tend to lean towards non-interventionism on foreign policy, I have always been sceptical of such claims. Regimes that are politically hostile to the West are usually quite happy to sell their oil, or whatever resources they may possess, to the West anyway.

In the case of Venezuela, however, the economic motive is unusually clear-cut. It looks nothing like a typical border dispute. It involves no national minority on the ‘wrong’ side of the border, and no landmarks of symbolic importance to Venezuela’s national story. Essequibo is a sparsely populated region, and its inhabitants – who are far more likely to speak English or an English-based creole language than Spanish – have no particular connection to Venezuela. The only thing that changed in recent years is that new oil reserves were discovered, and that, as a result, Guyana is experiencing the one thing which has become a distant memory in Venezuela: economic growth. 

Western socialists would no doubt retort that what happens in Venezuela is none of their business, and that asking them to condemn Maduro is a bad-faith argument. They are wrong. It very much is their business. They made it their business when they made Venezuela their poster child of the ‘Socialism of the 21st Century’. From the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, Venezuela was regularly held up as a shining example of a new model of socialism. Everyone on the anti-capitalist Left was at it.

Yet when the Venezuelan economy collapsed, its western admirers simply fell silent. Astonishingly, they managed to get away with it.

Why I love the Hold Steady

Live music is thriving right now. According to the US trade magazine Billboard, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour has so far grossed an estimated $838m, and that’s just from 66 shows in the Americas. It’s already the second highest-grossing tour in pop history, and she hasn’t had to cross an ocean yet.

At the top end, live music is indeed awash in cash. But at the grassroots end, it really isn’t: December began with one of the UK’s best loved small venues, Moles, in Bath, announcing its bankruptcy – one more historic room set to shut down. Bands complain about venues taking a third of their merchandise revenues, a recent practice that eats into one of the few areas where musicians really can make some money.

International touring has become harder and harder. For UK bands, getting into Europe after Brexit has become an administrative nightmare. For US bands, coming to Britain to be paid in sterling is barely worth it – the exchange rate reduces their fee to untenable levels. It’s not as if there’s one single villain here. Everyone in the live music business – venue owners, booking agents, promoters, musicians – is finding it harder than ever to make sense of the touring business, and harder still to make money from it. Which is why every sensible artist these days is trying to find ways to minimise outgoings and monetise new things.

As November tipped over into December, I travelled to New York to see the Hold Steady. I do this every year, because they’re my favourite band, and because I’m friends with them (I wrote a book with and for them last year). They never were and never will be a big band. They’re at the level of a beloved cult, but unusually for a band 20 years into their career, they’re continuing to evolve and make worthwhile new music. Crucially they have also figured out how to make their status work for them financially: they do multi-night runs in a small number of cities, with other activities fans can pay to participate in.

It helps, too, if an artist can inspire the same level of loyalty as the Hold Steady do, and if they create rituals the way the band and their fans have done. Looking around the venue, I saw many of the same faces I do every year, both in Brooklyn and during their March visits to London. Key to all this is that the Hold Steady are a startlingly good rock’n’roll band, fronted by the best lyricist of his generation.

Still, these shows wouldn’t be half the pleasure they are without the people who attend them: you could spend the entire evening people-watching, paying no attention to the stage. There was the pair of middle-aged men just in front of me one night, mouthing all the lyrics to each other with accompanying hand gestures, as if in conversation. There was the solicitor from Leeds moving through the crowd dispensing drinks to anyone he felt needed one, barely watching the actual show. There was the young woman in the front row, dispensing bags of confetti for throwing at appropriate moments in the set.

It’s not a model everyone can replicate. You need enough songs to play four different sets. You need fans old enough to have the time and money to travel. And you need to accept that this is your limit: there is no path from here to arenas. This is it: you’re in your 50s and from now on it’s about residencies in clubs. That might be too hard for some musicians to come to terms with, but the Hold Steady have made it work for them, and turned a lesson in music industry economics into an annual source of joy.

Michael Hann is the author of The Gospel of the Hold Steady: How a Resurrection Really Feels (Akashic Books)

Asylum seeker dies on board migrant barge

An asylum seeker has died on the Bibby Stockholm boat. The identity of the migrant who lost his life on board the barge in Dorset, which has been used to house those awaiting the outcome of their asylum application, has not been confirmed. A spokesman for the Home Office said: ‘We are aware of reporting of an incident. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time’.

Steve Smith, CEO of refugee charity Care4Calais, said: ‘Our thoughts are with the person who has lost their life, their family and their friends.’

News of the death came hours before a crunch Commons vote on the government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda. Rishi Sunak is attempting to persuade Tory MPs not to rebel against his emergency legislation to get the scheme off the ground. A previous version of the plan was judged to be unlawful by the Supreme Court.

The Bibby Stockholm boat in Portland is home to 300 migrants. The boat has been beset with problems since the first asylum seekers arrived over the summer. In August, those on board were evacuated after Legionella bacteria was found in the vessel’s water system.

Macron suffers a ‘stunning’ setback over his immigration crackdown

Emmanuel Macron refused to accept the resignation of his interior minister on Monday evening after the government’s immigration bill was thrown out of parliament. It was a crushing humiliation for Gerald Darmanin, as well as Macron, and a moment of exquisite pleasure for their many political opponents. 

In an unprecedented show of unity, right and left came together to adopt by just five votes a motion proposed by the Green Party to reject the bill without even debating it. They did so, however, for different reasons.

In the eyes of the left, the bill is ‘racist and xenophobic: they particularly object to the proposal to cut welfare benefits and expel more illegal immigrants; while the right – Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and the centre-right Republicans – considered it too liberal, specifically the clause that would regularise the status of illegal immigrants working in some job sectors. Le Pen told reporters she was ‘delighted’ with the outcome because it ‘protected the French from a migratory tidal wave’. 

Le Monde described the bill’s rejection as a ‘stunning setback for the government’, a description echoed in Le Figaro’s editorial this morning, which said it represents ‘the biggest setback suffered by Emmanuel Macron since his arrival at the Élysée’. 

Macron was elected president in 2017 on a pledge that he was ‘neither left, (nor) right’, and he attracted to his Renaissance party figures from the left (like his Socialist prime minister Elisabeth Borne) and from the right (such as Darmanin). His ambiguous governance was epitomised by his favourite slogan, ‘En Meme Temps’ (At the Same Time); in other words, saying one thing but doing another, in an attempt to keep his disparate party united. 

But, as with the Tories, the divisions within Macron’s party have been exposed by the question of immigration and the president has failed to produce a bill that satisfied his own party, let alone the rest of parliament.  

The bill has been over a year in the pipeline, a priority of Darmanin ever since a 12-year-old Parisian girl was raped and murdered, allegedly by an Algerian woman who should have been deported. But, as Le Figaro points out, since then Macron and his government have ‘continued to prevaricate, to put forward an incoherent plan. How can they promise to be tougher on immigration while at the same time saying they want to regularise the situation of illegal immigrants working in so-called short-staffed jobs?’. 

The truth is that Macron, like Sunak, is at heart in favour of free movement. Even if this bill had passed it wouldn’t have addressed the issue of legal migration, which, during Macron’s presidency, has reached an historic high. In particular, the right, including Macron’s former prime minister, Edouard Philippe, want to reexamine the 1968 treaty with Algeria that makes it much easier for their citizens to settle in France. 

Macron ruled out such a move last week, and on Sunday he attempted to influence parliament’s vote in an address that lauded France’s ‘tradition of asylum’. Speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Macron said:

‘France maintains its long tradition of asylum for those whose rights are threatened in their countries, and we will continue to defend this right of asylum…It protects freedom fighters and was conceived after World War II when many stateless individuals roamed Europe’.

Macron’s words may have done more harm than good, underlining the fact that, like many progressive leaders, he doesn’t appear to understand the difference between genuine asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution, and economic migrants; among the ten nations  most represented in asylum claims in France are Turkey, Pakistan, Albania, Georgia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. 

There was speculation among some political commentators on Monday evening that Macron could dissolve parliament in the wake of the defeat; that seems unlikely, as does – at this stage – the triggering of article 49.3 of the constitution, which permits a government to pass legislation without putting it to a parliamentary vote. This has been a favourite tactic of this government, and it was used to push through the unpopular pension reform bill earlier this year. 

Having refused Darmanin’s resignation, Macron told him to ‘submit proposals to move forward by overcoming this blockage and obtaining an effective law’. The most likely way this can be achieved is the formation of a joint committee formed of seven MPs and seven senators to produce a compromise bill, which is then submitted for a vote in the lower and upper houses. As the centre-right Republicans dominate the senate, this would allow them to toughen the bill to suit their taste and that of Le Pen’s National Rally. But it would then require the support in parliament of Macron’s Renaissance Party, many of whom are left-wing and pro-immigration.

Macron spent Monday in Toulouse where he unveiled the latest phase of his strategy to put France ‘at the forefront of technological and industrial innovation’. Like Rishi Sunak, this is where Macron is happiest, surrounded by like-minded people all imagining a bright and successful future. Instead their governments are menaced by the one issue they just can’t escape: mass and uncontrolled immigration. 

Cleverly takes a swipe at the Spartans

Christmas party season is in full swing and last night it was the turn of the Onward think tank. Old survivors and bright young things gathered in the Georgian splendour of the Royal Society of Arts to hear from star speaker James Cleverly. Though the mood in government is grim, the Home Secretary betrayed little trace of that, listing to assembled wonks, hacks and assorted grandees his colleagues’ achievements in office, including ‘doubling the number of immigration ministers’.

But it was a classical allusion that caught Steerpike’s ear when Cleverly sought to channel his inner Boris Johnson with a slight dig at the self-identifying ‘Spartans’ of the European Research Group. The Home Secretary told the room that ‘We need to have the resolve, the determination, of those Spartan warriors. This time I’m determined that, unlike the struggle of Thermopylae, we are not going to be destroyed – we are going to be victorious.’ Jolly good luck with that…

Across town, it was the turn of Cleverly’s opposite number, Yvette Cooper, to take to the stage at the Labour Together drinks with the Daily Mirror. The Shadow Home Secretary had the lefties laughing with her allusion to Cleverly’s private views about his government’s flagship offshore processing scheme. She joked that he ‘knows the Rwanda policy is batshit, Tory MPs are going apeshit and they’ll soon be in deep sh… ambles’.

All good fun – but who will get the last laugh when the Rwanda Bill is voted on tonight?

Have we really lost hundreds of thousands of workers since Covid?

The jobs market appears to be slowing down, but can we trust the figures? Vacancies have fallen for the longest continuous period on record, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). But there are still just under 950,000 jobs on offer which is well above the pre-lockdown norm. Meanwhile, despite British workers receiving real-terms pay rises in the three months to October, wage growth seems to have peaked. This will please Bank of England rate setters who feared that spiralling wage demands could worsen inflation. Average weekly earnings (including bonuses) fell slightly to 7.2 per cent on the year, down from 8 per cent. Because of lower inflation (now at 4.6 per cent) that translated to real-terms pay increases of 1.3 per cent. Other payroll data showed the slowest wage growth since October 2021.

What’s baffling central bankers though is unemployment's stubborn refusal to rise. Unemployment remained unchanged at 4.2 per cent, while over a fifth of the working age population is out of work and not looking for a job. Inflation rates have gone up to slow the economy down and so employers should be laying people off. That’s the logic the Bank of England bases its decisions on when it raises rates in efforts to tackle inflation. And while inflation has come down – which was always forecast to happen – rising rates seem to have done little to nothing to bring down the unemployment rate. Lockdowns and furlough, it seems, have broken traditional economic rules and employers are holding on to staff through fear of not being able to replace them in brighter times. 

So, while a slowdown in pay and a continued fall in job vacancies will please the Bank when they meet to make their next interest rates decision tomorrow, the unemployment numbers remain a cause for concern. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) shared that worry yesterday in its latest economic outlook and predicted that rates will be held at their current 5.25 per cent for at least the next two years. Their forecasts don't expect inflation to return to the 2 per cent target until the end of 2025. Markets, however, disagree and expect rates to begin falling next year.

The Bank’s decision is complicated by problems with the ONS’s figures, however. In the autumn, the figures were delayed because of problems with the Labour Force Survey where the headline employment, activity and sickness figures are derived from. The survey had collapsing response rates and a bias towards older and early retired people. Since then, the ONS has put together a new set of ‘experimental’ figures based on so-called administrative data drawn from benefits and tax statistics. The problem is best highlighted by the difference between two ONS sources of data, with one suggesting there were a million more workers in the economy than the other.

Until the ONS sorts this out – which they don’t plan to do until the spring – Britain will exist in a dangerous era of economic uncertainty. You simply cannot make decisions about which levers to pull if you do not know how many people are in work, looking for jobs or out of the labour market completely. Have we really lost hundreds of thousands of workers since the pandemic? Are a record number of workers off sick? It seems we just don’t know. The rate-setters on Threadneedle Street rely heavily on this information for deciding interest rates. That too will have to become guesswork.

What if Rishi Sunak loses his crunch Rwanda vote?

Rishi Sunak faces the most important vote of his premiership this evening when his ‘Safety of Rwanda’ bill has its second reading in the Commons. The bill seeks to finally get migrant flights off the ground by declaring Rwanda to be ‘safe’. If passed, the legislation will also mean that some international laws will have no effect, making a legal challenge – such as the Supreme Court’s verdict last month that the government’s previous version of the Rwanda scheme was unlawful – less likely.

However, Sunak’s third way has led to both the right and left of the party voicing concerns and doubts over whether it will pass at second reading. The last time a government bill was defeated at a similar stage was in 1986 on Sunday trading.

While Sunak has said that this will not be a confidence vote, the stakes are still very high. There is little appetite for a ‘Plan C’ in No. 10 and little time between now and an election to make another plan work. It means Sunak is betting the house on getting his bill through. The One Nation group met on Monday evening and are expected to back it (they will meet with the Prime Minister later today). But it’s the right where Sunak faces the biggest headache. If 29 Tory MPs vote against it, Sunak faces defeat. Around 40 MPs on the right of the party are planning to rebel. A senior Tory tells me they think it will ‘go right to the wire’.

Keir Starmer has claimed today that Sunak ought to win the vote comfortably but there is nervousness in government over their numbers. It’s telling that ministers are being summoned back from trips abroad to be present for the vote. This morning the New Conservatives met with Sunak in 10 Downing Street to discuss the bill over bacon sandwiches. The group – which included 2019-ers Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger – declined to speak to press on leaving the meeting. However, it is understood that following the meeting the group is divided on whether Sunak’s suggestion that he would consider amendments at the later stage is enough to win their support. Among the complaints from these MPs was a lack of consultation early on in the process and a general feeling the government is not conservative enough.

So, how could today play out?

1. Bill passes at second reading
   The best case scenario for Sunak today is that his charm offensive pays off, the whipping operation works and the Prime Minister wins the vote. At that point, Sunak’s plan remains alive and the battle is put off until the new year. Then, in January when MPs return, a battle looms over potential amendments to the bill. Sunak and his team will spend the holidays talking to potential rebels in a bid to get the bill through the later stages and then the House of Lords. In Sunak’s favour when it comes to this scenario is the fact that, while European Research Group (ERG) chair Mark Francois is very critical, known Sunak critics such as Priti Patel have come out to say they will back the bill.
2. The government pulls the vote
   If the Whips’ Office decide they don’t have the numbers to win the vote, the government could choose to pull the vote. However, this would be an admission of defeat, lead to claims Sunak had lost his nerve and raise doubts that Sunak could ever salvage the bill.
3. The Right unites to sink Sunak’s bill
   The worst case scenario for Sunak is that he cannot appease the right of the party and he faces a mass rebellion of MPs choosing to vote with Labour against the bill. The ERG has given a damning verdict, suggesting that the bill is incomplete and Sunak ought to start again. There is little appetite in No. 10 to do this, not least because of doubts that MPs on the left would back a strengthening of the bill and concern that the Rwandan government will pull the scheme. The ERG will meet again before the vote to discuss which way to go (the mood music from them is that it is a choice between voting against and abstaining). If the ERG team up with the Common Sense Group and the New Conservatives to oppose the bill it could mean a dangerous number of rebels for the government.
4. Sunak loses on abstentions
   One scenario most worrying government aides is that they lose the bill on abstentions. If 57 Tories abstain then the bill won’t pass. ‘There is a danger we abstain our way to defeat,’ says a government adviser. In this scenario, MPs walk back from the brink (in their minds at least) by choosing not to fully oppose the bill but merely abstain. MPs view this as the lesser evil, but if the number doing so is so high that Sunak still loses the vote, it will have the same effect as voting against. This is why some MPs on the right who plan to back the bill will today be telling their colleagues of the potential consequences of losing the vote. As one MP puts it: ‘It’s a domino effect – they are thinking about the first domino if they do this but not where it leads.’ There is a concern that some MPs voting against on policy ground haven’t thought through what it could mean for Sunak more generally.

And if Sunak loses at second reading, what could follow?

1. Sunak becomes the new Theresa May
   The Brexit parallels are coming thick and fast this week. Once again, a Tory leader faces two seemingly irreconcilable tribes fighting over a policy where purity may beat what is politically possible. Were Sunak to lose the vote, he would not have an easy Plan C and many MPs and aides believe he would find his authority shot and in the position Theresa May found herself in during the Brexit years when she was pushed around by her party. ‘It would be Theresa May all over again,’ says a Tory MP.
2. Sunak faces a no confidence vote
   If Sunak loses the vote, several MPs believe no confidence letters could go in. Were this to hit the 15 per cent of the party required, Sunak would face a no confidence vote. The Christmas recess ought to act as a fire break for this happening this year, but it could be a scenario for the new year. Sunak would very likely win the vote, but politically there isn’t really such a thing as a leader triumphing in a confidence vote. As soon as the vote comes, you are in trouble. It would be taken as a sign that Sunak was on borrowed time.
3. Sunak opts for an earlier election than planned
   One of the tricks Sunak still has to play that his party does not is when an election is called. While the idea of a Spring election is disliked by many senior figures, an early 2024 election could start to look like the best choice if the party is beginning to unravel. If Sunak faces pressure from his own side, he could decide to go to the polls to put his Rwanda policy to the public, or go before things got any worse.
4. Sunak’s premiership ends
   If Sunak loses the vote and feels he has nowhere to go with his flagship Rwanda policy, he could decide to give his party a final choice to back him or look elsewhere. In this scenario, the Tory party would risk changing leader once more before going to the polls. It’s an idea former cabinet minister Lord Frost floated only last week, but it is yet to appeal to the majority of the party.

‘Division will be punished’: Tory MPs urged not to rebel on Rwanda

Can Rishi Sunak persuade wavering Tory MPs not to vote down his Rwanda bill this afternoon? The European Research Group has already delivered its withering verdict: its so-called ‘star chamber’ of legal experts say the bill – which the government hopes will give the green light to send migrants to Africa – offers a ‘partial and incomplete solution’ to the problem of legal challenges being used to delay flights. The New Conservatives group has also waded in to declare that the bill requires ‘major surgery or replacement’.

Rishi Sunak is holding a breakfast meeting this morning to try and persuade his MPs not to vote the bill down. Meanwhile, heavyweight backbench Tories have been touring the airwaves to win over rebels.

Ex defence secretary Ben Wallace urged MPs not to ‘wreck’ the government by voting down the bill. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Wallace said: ‘The Bill is not a silver bullet, but it will make it more likely that some illegal immigrants are sent to Africa’. Former home secretary Priti Patel used an article in the Daily Mail to say that now is the time for the Conservatives ‘to work collectively’ and to ‘do the right thing’ for the British public. 

Meanwhile, fellow former cabinet minister Geoffrey Cox popped up on Newsnight to echo those remarks. ‘Division will be punished and there can be nothing to be gained by perpetuating divisions over this bill,’ he said. Will those warnings be enough to persuade Tory MPs who are on the fence?

There’s only one winner in Egypt’s sham election

After three days of voting, the polls close today in Egypt’s presidential elections. The result is expected on 18 December, but voters already know there can be only one winner: president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has been in power for nearly a decade. The other candidates for the presidency (those permitted to stand against him) aren’t really running to win but are simply there to make up the numbers and help create the impression that voters are being offered a choice. This sham of an electoral process reveals much about Sisi’s iron grip on the country and its main organs of state, including the much-feared security services.

After seizing power in a military coup in 2013, Sisi won two presidential elections in 2014 and 2018, both with 97 per cent of the vote. These astonishing numbers are hardly surprising given what happens at election time in Egypt. In the 2018 election, the only other candidate standing – Moussa Mostafa Moussa – openly supported Sisi’s rule. It was a non-contest labelled as ‘farcical’ by critics. The 2018 shambles prompted a change of approach for this time round, with the authorities determined to have a multi-candidate process to give the impression of a real electoral contest. But this has fooled no one – it is all for show.

The main potential opposition candidate, Ahmed el-Tantawy, a former MP, was forced out of the race early. He claimed security forces had arrested dozens of his supporters and blocked him from holding campaign events. The authorities dismissed all his accusations as baseless. He is now facing trial for allegedly circulating election-related papers without permission. The three remaining candidates in the election have a low public profile with little in the way of significant support expected for any of them. This is what passes for a fair and free election in Egypt.

The only real question is how many voters will bother turning up at the polls, given that the outcome appears predetermined. Voting had to be extended in 2014 for an extra day to help boost the numbers. Four years later, in 2018, the turnout was a lowly 40 per cent. There have been reports in the past of bribes, involving money or food, to help encourage voters into the polling booths. This widespread apathy amongst voters stings Sisi because it undermines what little claim he can make to democratic legitimacy.

Sisi can conspire to win as many elections as he likes but this will do nothing to hide the dire state of Egypt after his decade in power. Official figures show that nearly a third of the country’s 109 million population lives below the poverty line. Its currency has lost more than half its value over the last year or so. A further devaluation is widely expected after the election. Inflation is running at just under 35 per cent, with food inflation even higher. Egypt stumbles from one IMF bailout to the next.

Even so, there appears to be no lack of money when it comes to funding the growing number of political vanity projects dear to Sisi’s heart. These include a £6.5 billion expansion of the Suez Canal, and the building of a new administrative capital on the outskirts of Cairo which is expected to cost £34 billion. Anyone who dares to question the decisions or actions of those in power is crushed without mercy. Sisi’s political foes languish in Egypt’s notoriously brutal prison system. Human rights groups have accused the security forces of carrying out arbitrary detentions and torture with impunity. The regime continues to maintain that there are no political prisoners in Egypt.

All in all, it is a grim state of affairs. Long gone is the heady idealism of the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprising, when Egypt’s long-suffering people demanded democracy and an open society with greater freedoms and rights. They have ended up with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who shows no sign of departing the scene any time soon.

Nuremberg is the best and worst of Germany

On a snowy night in Nuremberg, a city that encapsulates the best and worst of Germany, a huge crowd has gathered in the ancient Marktplatz for the opening of the Christkindlesmarkt, Bavaria’s biggest Christmas market. Cradling mugs of steaming Glühwein, stamping our feet to keep out the cold, we’re all waiting for the Christkind (Christ Child) to appear on the balcony of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), an event that marks the start of Nuremberg’s Advent season.

Turns out we have Martin Luther to thank for this quaint Teutonic custom. Before the Reformation, German children used to get presents from St Nicolas on 6 December, but Luther didn’t approve of saints, so he decided children should wait until Christmas Eve and receive their gifts from Christ himself. Despite his best efforts, St Nicolas never went away and all across Central Europe the Christkind still runs him a close second.

Over the centuries, the Christkind has morphed into an angel, and here in Nuremberg, the part is always played by a local girl in her late teens. It’s a charming tradition, a throwback to a more innocent, less avaricious age, and seeing the little children gazing up at her, agog, I feel my grouchy cynicism melt away. Maybe I’m a bit biased (my father’s family are German), but for me, Advent always feels particularly special in Germany. Yet part of what makes it special is the underlying sadness, the darkness amid the light, and nowhere is this contrast starker than here in Nuremberg – a salutary reminder that the Nativity is a story of hope and redemption, rather than unbridled joy.

For younger visitors, Nuremberg is synonymous with Christmas kitsch, but for those of us who grew up in the shadow of the second world war, it will always be a byword for the bombastic barbarity of Hitler’s Reich. This was the Nazis’ cultural capital, the setting for their annual Reichsparteitag – a monumental rally immortalised in 1934 in Leni Riefenstahl’s hypnotic film, Triumph of The Will. I interviewed Riefenstahl in 1992, the year that she turned 90, and the memory of it has never left me: her alluring, frightening intensity; her lack of intellectual curiosity… This talented, amoral woman made Hitler seem heroic and Nuremberg gave her the perfect stage.

Five hundred years ago, Nuremberg was one of the biggest cities in Central Europe: the centre of the German Renaissance, the hometown of Albrecht Dürer (his home and studio are still here, now an evocative museum). The city came through subsequent centuries remarkably unscathed, and when Hitler came to power in 1933, its rich Germanic heritage made it a place of pilgrimage for his acolytes. On the edge of town, his minions constructed an enormous arena, where he could address 200,000 devotees at a time.

You can still visit the site today and wander around the parade ground which staged Albert Speer’s spectacular nocturnal searchlight displays, his so-called ‘Cathedral of Light’. The sculpted swastikas and eagles are long gone, and the long colonnades have been demolished, but it’s still intensely atmospheric. Hitler’s megalomania is revealed in its gargantuan dimensions. A short walk away, his gigantic half-built congress hall (one of several colossal buildings planned for this spooky site) is currently being converted into a new museum.

Nuremberg was bombed flat by Allied aircraft in January 1945 and after the fierce street battle that followed, between the Wehrmacht and the US Army, 90 per cent of its antique Altstadt (old town) lay in ruins. Only Dresden fared worse. And yet, like Dresden, Nuremberg has risen from the ashes. It will never be beautiful again, and maybe that’s only fitting, but when you see photos of what it looked like in 1945, you realise its renovation has been astonishing. Buildings that survived the war have been lovingly restored and most of the postwar additions are remarkably sympathetic. Looking out across these tiled rooftops from the Kaiserburg, the robust castle which looms over the city, it’s hard to tell which buildings are new and which ones are original. By building in a similar style, to the same scale, with the same local sandstone, modern architects have revived the medieval ambience of this battered city. If only other architects in Germany and beyond had been so conscientious.

I finished my weekend in Nuremberg in the city’s Palace of Justice – famous (or rather infamous) as the setting for the Nuremberg Trials. The original courtroom is still there and still looks much the same. It feels eerie to sit in the austere room where Nazi ringleaders were tried and sentenced. Upstairs, a sombre exhibition guides you through every step of this painstaking judicial process and explains its enduring implications. In 1935, the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws legitimised the persecution of German Jewry, setting Germany (and Europe) on a path which culminated in the final solution. Ten years later, this groundbreaking trial set a crucial precedent for international justice, warning future tyrants that they would be held accountable for their crimes.

It was only when I went back to Le Méridien to collect my suitcase that I realised this grand hotel was where the Allied lawyers and journalists had stayed during the trials. Today, it was full of American tourists, here for Advent. I had half an hour before my train to Bayreuth – just enough time for one last visit to the Christkindlesmarkt. The cobbled square was full of happy families and the Nuremberg Rallies seemed a world away. As I said, the best and worst of Germany, side by side.

On the death of my dog

It has been four months since my dog died and I still feel like something is missing when I open my front door. At first, I can’t quite work it out. Did I leave the heating on at work? Should I have gone to the shops? Am I in the wrong flat? No, what’s missing is the patter of paws, the inquisitive nose and the affectionate barrage of fur. 

Lola was 14 when she died, which is old for any dog but especially for a German shepherd. She used to lie in the centre of the flat I shared with my then-girlfriend with an unencumbered view of every room so that she could monitor proceedings. Now, the whole place feels emptier.

Losing a dog may not have the same spiritual complexity as losing a friend or family member. But what I miss is the simplicity of our relationship – the natural joie de vivre that dogs are blessed with. I could come home from a tough day at work and be restored to happiness by the force of good cheer that radiated from her welcome. Dogs turn up the happiness in a home as effectively as a thermostat turns up the heating. 

Not that their emotions are one-note. They are very empathetic and dutiful creatures. Whenever I was sick, my dog would march into the room and stand beside my bed, watching the door, as if my enemies might choose this moment to attack. (Now, when ill, I’m dangerously vulnerable.)

Besides, it is good to care for something – good both for its own sake and as preparation for life. I don’t want to sound like the sort of person who introduces himself as a ‘dog dad’; having a pet is obviously not like having a child but that doesn’t make it meaningless. Having a nice walk with an appreciative creature means more than browsing Facebook in bed. Hell, even mopping up mistimed pee is a productive challenge to one’s stoical capacities.

Since my dog died I’ve been tempted to get another. I’m sure I will at some point. After your first dog, there’s a solid chance that you will never live doglessly again. But I haven’t found one yet. I still need to get over my last dog. A pet isn’t like a jacket or a phone. You can’t pick up a replacement and carry on with life.  

Dogs – and I’m sure that the same is true of cats – have their own personalities and your relationship with one can never be identical to your relationship with another. Lola was an especially charismatic hound who loved people as fiercely as she hated pretty much any other being (except for her rubber pigs). It would be unfair to think that I could slot another dog neatly into a Lola-shaped hole. 

Besides, there are downsides to dog ownership. There are small ones, like your socks doubling in fluffiness when shedding seasons arrive or your pockets filling up with plastic bags. But there are also bigger ones. If you want to travel, for work or holidays, then you have an adoring elephant in the room. Perhaps your friends might be willing to look after your canine pal – but perhaps they wouldn’t be (and perhaps, depending on the dog, they wouldn’t be your friends any more after the experience). You could take them to the kennels, but that could be a sad and expensive ordeal. Dogs can be miserable when you leave them to go to the gym, never mind when you leave them to go to France or Hungary. 

There is freedom in knowing that I can just drop everything and go to the mountains over the weekend if I want to, or book a foreign trip for my next holiday without wondering about where I’m going to leave the dog. As an expat, I’m looking forward to coming to England at Christmas and it wouldn’t feel the same if I knew that I was going to be leaving a furry friend in the kennels for a lonely holiday. 

But I know I’ll get a dog before long. It’s almost as inevitable as the new year. Yes, it might mean not going to the mountains and it might mean putting off that foreign trip. But how much will all that travelling be worth if I end up coming back to open the door to a silent empty hall?

Gary Lineker slips up (again)

Will Gary Lineker ever learn? The BBC Sports pundit is now facing criticism after signing an open letter calling for the government to end the Rwanda plan and create a ‘fair new plan for refugees’. It comes just nine months after he sparked a huge row over describing government rhetoric as being not dissimilar from, er, 1930s Germany. So much for that famed BBC impartiality…

Far from being chastened, the left-wing centre forward it at it again. Quote-tweeting Jonathan Gullis MP on Twitter — who criticised Lineker’s impartiality rule breach — the Match of the Day presenter sneered: ‘Jonathan hasn’t read the new guidelines…or, should I say, had someone read them to him?’ 

But, as Times journalist Jake Kanter pointed out, the BBC’s new social media rules demand staff don’t ‘criticise the character of individual politicians in the UK’. And now the BBC has spoken. The corporation stated this afternoon that while it won’t ‘comment on individuals or indeed individual tweets’, their guidance ‘is also clear that individuals should be civil’ and, crucially, ‘not call into question anyone’s character’. Oh dear. Sounds like Lineker is about to get yet another talking to…

Will Gary make a hattrick of rows before the year is out?

Sunak’s strange Covid Inquiry appearance

Rishi Sunak had a strange pandemic. He spent a lot of it in government meetings, the details of which he could not recall, and with people who he always got on with. That was the overall thrust of his evidence to the Covid Inquiry today. The only phrase that came up more than a variation on ‘I do not recall the specific details’ was ‘referring to the Spectator article’ (you can re-read this now vital piece of inquiry evidence here). 

There was one thing the Prime Minister can recollect in sharp detail from his time as chancellor, though, and that’s that absolutely no one raised any concerns with him about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme between it being proposed and going live.

‘There was almost a month between announcement and commencement’, he told the inquiry. In this instance he could not recall anyone saying anything, not because he was hazy on the detail, but because – according to him – they really hadn’t said anything.

‘They had ample opportunity’ to raise the concerns in that month, he said, pointing out that the minutes of meetings where future risks were discussed suggested that no concerns were raised by the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty or other government advisers such as Patrick Vallance. The claim from Whitty and Vallance, by the way, is that they weren’t consulted on the scheme, and would have raised concerns if they had been. Sunak did concede that he hadn’t formally consulted the pair, arguing: ‘This was a micro policy to make sure that that capacity which the scientists had already said was part of an overall package which could be safely delivered, was actually used. And it was done very much in that context.’ But when shown an email from Treasury officials warning that the reinfection rate could rise above 1 as a result of policies to open up the economy. ‘I don’t recall seeing that email. That didn’t come to me.’

It is interesting that of all the things Sunak felt he had to defend today, the now-notorious attempt to get the hospitality sector back on its feet was the one he made the most effort over. He insisted that jobs in hospitality were in grave danger without the scheme, and pointed out that as chancellor, his role had been to consider the economic impact of measures.

Sunak does get rather tetchy when he feels people questioning him aren’t getting his point, and there were little moments of passive aggression with Hugo Keith KC, including when the counsel to the inquiry asked him to slow down, and Sunak apologised, adding that he thought he’d just been told to move along more quickly. But his main irritation was clearly with the officials who he felt had unfairly blamed his scheme, rather than with ministerial colleagues, including Boris Johnson, who he was studiously neutral about. Perhaps the Prime Minister, having recently dumped his attempt to be the ‘change candidate’ in the next general election, felt that characterising the Johnson administration as being dysfunctional probably wouldn’t help him as he tries to persuade the electorate to stick with the Conservatives.

Trump expands his lead in Iowa

Former president Donald Trump’s support among voters in Iowa now tops 50 percent, according to a new poll from the Des Moines Register and NBC News. It’s the widest lead Trump has enjoyed in the first state to vote as part of the Republican primary process. Fifty-one percent of likely Republican caucus goers said Trump is their first choice, a gain of eight points since the last poll published in October. That puts him up more than thirty points over his nearest challenger.

Aside from this being an obvious victory for Trump, who enjoys a likely insurmountable lead, the poll is also very bad news for former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Haley failed to gain any ground in the poll, remaining steady at 16 percent since October, despite recently nabbing the endorsement of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity — along with millions of dollars and a massive get-out-the-vote effort. Haley bragged about being backed by the Republican mega-donor class (and some wealthy Democrats!) at the fourth presidential primary debate on Wednesday night. She alleged that her closest competitor, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, was merely jealous that he no longer enjoyed the support of Wall Street. But even without their deep pockets, DeSantis managed to climb three points in Iowa since October, and is now sitting at 19 percent.

Trump’s climb in the polls comes as he has refused to participate in any of the RNC-sanctioned debates, faces four federal indictments, and has built an impressive army of small-dollar, online donors. The poll’s cross tabs are almost equally as fascinating: Trump enjoys 63 percent support among first-time caucus goers, which tend to skew younger, wins independent voters over Nikki Haley, and has the most immovable support among all of the candidates. Seventy percent of Trump supporters in Iowa say their mind is made up on who to vote for, while 70 percent and 65 percent of DeSantis and Haley supporters, respectively, say they could be persuaded to vote for someone else. 

-Amber Duke

On our radar

INFOWARS RISING Infowars host Alex Jones is back on X after a long suspension from the social media platform. Following a viral interview of Jones by Tucker Carlson, X owner Elon Musk informally polled users to ask if he should restore Jones’s account. Seventy percent of respondents said “Yes.”

GOP CHARGES AHEAD ON IMPEACHMENT The Republican-led House is steps away from formalizing its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden as his son, Hunter, resists appearing for a private deposition. 

COMEDY FAIL? Saturday Night Live is being panned for a sketch based on last week’s congressional testimony on antisemitism by a group of college presidents. Although the University of Pennsylvania’s president resigned after failing to condemn calls for genocide against Israel, SNL chose to make Congresswoman Elise Stefanik the butt of the joke. 

Sheila Jackson Lee drops mayoral race

Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee lost a runoff election Saturday to decide the next mayor of Houston, Texas, proving the axiom that telling your supporters to vote on the wrong day is never a good electoral strategy.

Jackson Lee ran against a fellow Democrat, State Senator John Whitmire, in a highly publicized contest that promised to lay bare fissures within the party. Whitmire said he would tackle Houston’s crime issue by increasing policing, addressed inflation and infrastructure concerns, and had the backing of the city’s fire department and police unions. Jackson Lee notched endorsements from Democratic Party bosses such as Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries, and focused her campaign on abortion access and combating alleged right-wing extremism. She also suggested her opponent was “follow[ing] MAGA extremists” by working across the aisle with Republicans in the state legislature. 

Whitmire won the plurality of votes during the general election, and smashed Jackson Lee nearly 2:1 in the runoff.

Jackson Lee’s campaign was marked with plenty of other drama. In October, a leaked recording featured Jackson Lee berating two staffers, calling them “fuck-ups,” “fat” and “big-ass children,” among other expletives. Jackson Lee expressed regret for her words but blamed her opponent for the attack. The week before the runoff, Jackson Lee ran a TV ad in the Houston market telling voters the wrong date for the election. The ad said to vote “on or before December 7,” two days before polls actually closed.

Whitmire’s victory speech notably excluded any mention of Jackson Lee by name, but took several shots at the congresswoman. 

“People want to go to work for me because we respect people. We don’t bully people,” Whitmire said, seemingly referring to the leaked audio scandal. Whitmire also said he was tired of “one person” taking all of the credit for bringing in funds to the local congressional delegation. 

What’s next for Jackson Lee? She has until 6 p.m. today to decide if she will run for re-election to her seat in Congress, which she was served in since 1995. 

–Cockburn

Mr. Zelensky comes to Washington

Speaker Mike Johnson will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday amid ongoing negotiations over aid delivery to the war-torn country. Zelensky is also set to meet with President Joe Biden and on Monday delivered an address to the Department of Defense’s National Defense University. 

The news comes at a time when the speaker has given the Biden administration an ultimatum on tying additional foreign aid to increased funding for border security. While Johnson has personally expressed his support for aiding Ukraine’s efforts, he faces an internal challenge as a growing faction in his party loses faith in the war effort. Representative Mary Miller tweeted that she would “continue to vote AGAINST sending your tax $$ to corrupt oligarchs in Ukraine for a proxy war that could have ended in ’22,” noting that Biden rejected a peace deal that was presented last year. Representative Matt Gaetz similarly reacted to Zelensky’s visit, writing, “America has sent enough money to Ukraine. We should tell Zelensky to seek peace.” 

–Juan P. Villasmil

From the site

Amber Duke: On the ground at the Washington Post journo strike
Juan P. Villasmil: Why Joe Biden’s Latin America policy is failing

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Is Javier Milei abandoning his radicalism already?

When Labour’s Liam Byrne left a note for the incoming coalition Treasury team in 2010 which said ‘I’m afraid there is no money’, it was meant as a joke. When Argentine president Javier Milei sent a similar message in his inauguration speech on Sunday, it was far from comedy. It was an honest assessment of the seriousness of the situation faced by South America’s second-largest economy.

Milei won last month’s election thanks to an anti-establishment campaign in which he heavily criticised the country’s political classes and promised drastic change. It was his penchant for cloning dogs and bringing a chainsaw to campaign rallies that earned him international headlines, but it was something far simpler that appears to have led 56 per cent of Argentines to choose him as their next president: the economy.

Even in a country used to living with economic crises, the situation today is bleak. Argentina has a little over three months to make a $10.6 billion (£8.4 billion) payment to service its gargantuan debt to the International Monetary Fund, the total of which stands at $45 billion (£35.8 billion). This will be a tough ask while it runs a trade deficit in the tens of billions and is experiencing triple-digit inflation.

Milei’s flagship pledge – to close the central bank and dollarise the economy – will also be difficult to achieve due to the country’s reserves of dollars being effectively empty. His decision to appoint the relatively moderate Luis Caputo as economy minister suggests this plan is on ice for now. All of this added up to an inauguration speech far more grounded in realism than the fiery rhetoric that characterised his campaign as he warned of the need for ‘shock treatment; to kickstart the economy.’

‘We don’t have alternatives and we don’t have time’, he said, as he warned that the actions of previous governments had left the country on the brink of its ‘biggest crisis in history’. 

‘We know that in the short term the situation will worsen, but soon we will see the fruits of our effort, having created the base for solid and sustainable growth’, he said. He has promised that the forthcoming cuts will affect the public sector rather than the private sector. But that will not be particularly reassuring to the huge swathes of Argentines employed by government.

In the weeks since the election victory, Milei and his allies had already been warning that the country would need to wait for his most drastic changes. Inflation could take as long as two years to get under control, the new president has said. There is also the matter of getting things done in Congress, something which could prove difficult as Milei’s party lacks representatives. The first test will be his ‘omnibus’ bill, a mighty tome of deregulations and reforms said to come in at 1,500 pages.

There was a note of optimism amid all the gloom. ‘One hundred years of failure aren’t undone in a day. But it begins in a day, and today is that day’, Milei told his supporters. He has also not given up on plans to shutter a number of government ministries, including those dedicated to women, the environment and science. But whether he is allowed the time to finish what he started will be a crucial question. Some analysts believe Milei will struggle to complete his term when he comes up against the all-powerful machine of Peronism, the political movement that has ruled Argentina for most of the past 80 years. Some are predicting a wave of protests, which could turn violent, as the reality of recession hits and poverty – already affecting an estimated 45 per cent of the population – soars. Dr Julio Montero, an associate professor at the University of San Andres, points out that Milei is just the fourth non-Peronist president since 1983, and two of the others – Raúl Alfonsín and Fernando de la Rúa – were unable to finish their terms.

A new movie is set to hit cinemas in Argentina this week. The synopsis of Chau Buenos Aires tells the story of Julio, a tango musician in the capital who, in the middle of the country’s 2001 economic crisis, harbours dreams of emigrating to Europe. These dreams are crushed when the government limits the amount of pesos the public can withdraw each week and he is forced to begin selling his possessions. Argentines today, who say they are simply trying to get to the end of each month, will be hoping the film’s release is not a portent of things to come.

GOP favorite for Santos seat settling lawsuits after accusations of not paying workers

A leading Republican candidate hoping to be selected for the special election to fill George Santos’s seat is currently settling a class-action lawsuit in California for unpaid wages — at least the second lawsuit for wage violations brought against his company in recent years. Mike Sapraicone, the owner of international security company Squad Security, was accused by two men of violating wage and other laws, according to a 2022 lawsuit.

The lawsuit, not previously reported, is the latest revelation to emerge about Long Island’s Sapraicone, amid national scrutiny over how well candidates will be vetted by the Nassau GOP in the district, on the heels of Santos’s year-long scandal and criminal allegations. Sapraicone is a sixty-seven-year-old retired New York Police Department detective — and his firm Squad Security claims on LinkedIn that “all our employees are active or retired law enforcement.”

The special election for the vacant seat in New York’s 3rd congressional district that the disgraced Santos flipped red in 2022 has been set for February 13 by Governor Kathy Hochul. Last week, New York Democrats chose former representative Thomas Suozzi as their candidate. The GOP field has several contenders, but Sapraicone has emerged as a favorite, according to multiple Nassau County GOP insiders, and is the current fundraising leader, according to his most recent FEC filings.

Squad Security operates in ten states and Canada, and is a “a full service security, investigations and protection company” that has served Fortune 500 corporations including Apple, according to its website. The company is currently settling a 2022 class-action lawsuit which alleged that Squad Security failed to pay wages, provide lawful meal and rest periods and reimburse employees. Two similar lawsuits brought by two California employees were combined into one for settlement purposes. In June Sapraicone signed a declaration in support of preliminary approval of the settlement which awards $575,000 in total to the two plaintiffs and up to 100 John Does.

The proposed settlement states that the defendant “strongly denies violating any laws or failing to pay any wages” and that “defendant is settling this matter to avoid further litigation expenses and disruption to its business.”

Squad Security, headquartered in Uniondale, New York, received a PPP loan for $1.3 million in April 2020. The loan has been forgiven in full.

The current lawsuit is not the only class-action lawsuit that Sapraicone’s firm has settled. In 2017, Nathan Tapper and another Squad Security employee brought a similar suit against the security company.

That lawsuit, settled in 2018, awarded Tapper and other employees an average of $1,579, while the biggest payout was $26,832. The amount varied depending on how many overtime hours the guards and off-duty officers worked. 

“This is the type of businessman he is,” Tapper told The Spectator in a phone interview: “They would lower your hourly rate when they paid you overtime from thirty-six an hour to twenty-eight. [An employee] at the company found out about it and alerted us,” he said.

Tapper, who retired as a police officer in Los Angeles before working for Squad, said when he found out that Sapraicone was running for Congress, he imagined that voters in New York just didn’t know his background.

“Over the past thirty years, it was a privilege to employ and support hundreds of active and retired law enforcement professionals,” Sapraicone said. “States like California and New York with liberal political leaders often make it easy for litigious attorneys to bring lawsuits against businesses, further hurting our economy. This is another reason I’m running for Congress — to ensure we get our nation back on the right track.”

Squad Security did not respond to a request for comment. Attorneys representing the three plaintiffs also declined to comment.

Nassau County GOP chairman Joe Cairo said he planned to interview twenty-two candidates for the candidate slot and that vetting would be a high priority: “We will do an extensive research on them. We’ll engage an outside firm and we’ll come up with the best candidate, a candidate who gives us the best opportunity as Republicans to win and the candidate who will best serve the people of the 3rd congressional district,” he told CBS News.

“For months all signs have pointed to Sapraicone as the preferred choice of the Nassau GOP establishment,” a Nassau Republican insider told The Spectator, “but it’s unlikely he can withstand the scrutiny that comes with replacing Santos. The party’s reputation absorbed a debilitating hit from Santos.”

On X, Santos posted an endorsement of Sapraicone that the candidate himself later disavowed, calling Santos a “crook and fraudster.” Sapraicone has repeatedly tried to distance himself from the Santos scandal, telling Newsmax that “former representative George Santos’s brief time in the US House of Representatives showed that Long Island Republicans must vet their candidates better.”

Sapraicone has donated $20,970 to the Nassau County Republican Committee this year so far, according to county filings, and also donated to neighboring Representative Anthony d’Esposito. A report in Politico last week described how Sapraicone settled a lawsuit when he was a NYPD detective for withholding evidence, leading to a wrongful incarceration. Sapraicone previously made remarks about being afraid of a black man on a podcast, also uncovered by Politico’s Playbook.

Interestingly, Sapraicone has, according to Newsday, donated $39,000 to Suozzi since 2016, who would be his opponent if he is selected by the Nassau GOP. Sapraicone’s wife Eileen Daly Sapraicone was elected as a Nassau County Family Court judge in 2017, running on both the Democrat and Republican lines. 

An announcement from the New York Republicans about their chosen candidate is due as soon as this week, sources close to the party told The Spectator.

Was Sunak oblivious to No. 10’s Covid dysfunction?

Rishi Sunak has already provided a statement of evidence to the Covid Inquiry, but this morning’s hearing spent more time examining his interview with Fraser in The Spectator last summer. Hugo Keith KC was particularly interested in whether Sunak had a line of communication with Boris Johnson that wasn’t recorded. Keith was referring to a line in the interview which says Sunak tried not to challenge the Prime Minister in public or leave a paper trail because it would be leaked:

He tried not to challenge the Prime Minister in public, or leave a paper trail. ‘I’d say a lot of stuff to him in private,’ he says. ‘There’s some written record of every-thing. In general, people leak it – and it causes problems.’

Sunak claimed the paper trail was what ‘the author’ wrote, and ‘the author’ (Fraser), offers more detail on that here.

Sunak also argued that it was not possible for all conversations between ministers to be recorded. He said:

‘I think the point I’d probably challenge is its significance. I think it is genuinely impossible for every single conversation between two cabinet ministers, whoever they are, to be recorded. I mean, there aren’t civil servants following cabinet ministers through the division lobbies, on a typical evening, where they might be chatting about something or if I was having lunch with my family in the garden at the same time that the Prime Minister was, on a typical weekend in Downing Street, and we’d obviously be chatting as we were barbecuing or something. I mean, it’s just it’s gonna be impractical to think that every single conversation between two cabinet ministers can be recorded in that way. But I think everyone would accept that, I think that;s obviously fine because what is happening is when there are formal decisions to be made and formal conversations to be had, those are happening with individuals. They are minuted.’

What sounded rather less convincing was Sunak’s claim that he hadn’t been aware of any real dysfunction in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office in the way that other witnesses have repeatedly described. He told Huge Keith KC that he ‘didn’t work directly in No. 10 or in the Cabinet Office, so it’s hard for me to comment on that other than to say that my interactions with No. 10 and the Cabinet Office during this period felt fine to me.’ He insisted that he been able to ‘input advice to the Prime Minister or when decisions were being made’ and that he ‘didn’t feel I had been shut out’.

There has been a strange generosity from Sunak and Johnson in their evidence to the Inquiry. Listening to this morning’s evidence, you might be forgiven for thinking the then Chancellor had been really happy about the way the government made decisions on lockdown, and that his relationship with Johnson had been consistently rosy, with happy chatter at weekend barbecues. The Inquiry is having a short lunch break. Perhaps Sunak will offer more insight into the dynamics in government this afternoon.

What Sunak really said about lockdown

In the dying days of Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign, he gave an interview to The Spectator about lockdown which he was grilled on today at the Covid Inquiry. At the time he was speaking candidly as he had nothing to lose: it was clear that Liz Truss would win the Tory leadership contest. Now, he is Prime Minister and has to defend the record of the Conservative government, including decisions he argued against. So he was in a difficult position when the inquiry asked him about he had told me in that interview.

When lockdown struck, Sunak had just been made Chancellor and was relatively new to government. There was an aspect of Mr Smith Goes to Washington about his disbelief at the way lockdown was implemented without any recognition about the harm it would cause. He thought government had a duty to level with people, and say that it would have the following risks but they thought it was worthwhile. Why, he asked, should people not be told the truth? Isn’t it basic ethics to run a cost-benefit analysis in any public health question?

The common cost-benefit exercise in public health is called a QALY exercise: counting the pros and cons not in just crude lives lost or saved but ‘quality-adjusted life year.’ So the death of a 20-year-old is weighted higher than that of a 90-year-old. But this was not conducted as the government wanted no recognition of side-effects or tradeoffs. Lockdown was, at most, to be presented as “frustrating” the damage it would inflict upon society and the economy was never to be referenced. It was a see-no-evil policy.

As Sunak told me in that interview…

The general sense was: no trade-offs. The general sense was: over-index for fear. I was very nervous because my analytical side of me was saying: “Clearly we should be having a QALY analysis… Any health economist would do this analytically with a QALY analysis, because that’s how you do it. That’s how NICE do clinical things. It may sound a bit, you know, kind of robotic..

And later…

I wasn’t allowed to talk about the trade-off.. The script was not to ever acknowledge them. The script was: oh, there’s no trade-off, because doing this for our health is good for the economy

Sunak was not just worried not just about coming across as a “robotic” bean counter. As he knew, to defy the see-no-evil policy meant making himself a target. The Matt Hancock WhatsApp files show any minister seen to ask questions of Neil Ferguson’s newly-concocted theory was disparaged as pro-virus or swivel-eyed. Even Simon Case, the civil service chief, would join in the name-calling.

The debate descended not because these are bad or stupid people, but because this is political psychology at work. In a crisis, a tribal instinct kicks in. All of a sudden, you were either pro-life lockdown or wanted to “let it rip”. And anyone who wanted to critically evaluate the effect of lockdown was also suspect. The most absurd playground insult came from Angela Mclean, now the government’s chief medical adviser, who called Sunak “Dr Death”. His Eat Out to Help Out scheme was dismissed by Chris Whitty as ‘Eat Out To Help Out The Virus’ – even though, as is now known, it did no such thing.

Politicians and scientists alike went tribal. Any sense of objectivity or professional detachment had quickly melted in the furnace of crisis.

Sunak sensed all of this. To ask questions was to be seen to be disloyal (and to be briefed against by No10) so he had to be careful. I wrote in my interview that Sunak…

tried not to challenge the prime minister in public, or leave a paper trail.

Sunak was asked about this by Hugo Keith QC in the Inquiry: what did these words mean? Why not leave a paper trail? He dismissed this point by saying these were my words, not his. That’s true. But I was summarising his words. Here’s what he said:

‘So I was indexing for loyalty as well. I’d say a lot of stuff to him in private. This is me being new to it.  So I don’t put 50 things in the system so there’s some written record of everything. Because generally, people leak it. And it causes problems.’

By “indexing for loyalty” (Sunak says ‘indexing’ a lot) he means he felt his words and actions were being assessed for signs that he was distancing himself from the PM.

The inquiry is supposed to find lessons to be learned, so we get it right next time. Here is the lesson. Previous pandemic plans did not factor in political psychology and the effect of tribalism. Covid showed us that in a pandemic, a challenge to the PM’s chosen response is regarded as treachery. Such an environment is quite obviously unsuitable for guiding a country through crisis. Difficult decisions were not properly challenged; even the Chancellor felt he could not use the Whitehall system to do so.

And if questions had been asked? Some might have earlier spotted some of the glaring flaws in Neil Ferguson’s lockdown theory: that it ignored the massive spontaneous behavioural response and it focused on community spread (ie, in the country at large) rather than care homes and hospitals where deaths were concentrated.

A Sage member recognised that bringing down R in all areas had a ‘huge economic cost, but sorting out R in hospitals and care homes should be possible at much lower economic cost’. On reflection, I am not sure whether this aspect was as rigorously understood, emphasised, or explored as much as it might have been.

But how could anything be rigorously understood or explored in the paranoid, accusatory climate that Sunak describes?

We know, now, that independent inquiry is the first casualty of a pandemic. This is the human-nature political response clear from the name-calling and ganging-up that we see from the WhatsApps and emails.

That’s why a special red-team is needed next time: an awkward-squad whose job it is to throw every possible challenge at whatever the PM decides. The political apparatus is too easily paralysed by paranoia and tribalism: as we saw. Let’s hope the Inquiry doesn’t suffer the same fate.

PS – A note on Sunak’s political evolution

At the time, Sunak would come across a bit Martin Luther (“Here I stand, I can do no other”). A financier whose career had been built on working hard than the other guy, finding better facts and acting upon them. An evidence-based more than ideological politician who was finding it ever-harder to go with Boris Johnson’s more bombastic style. A guy who thought achievement would speak for itself. But when you’re PM and you have a dodgy record to dress up as a good one, notions of truth and conscience become a bit more elastic. Right now, Sunak knows he will soon fight an election defending the record of a government elected in December 2019. Realistically, there’s a limit to how much he is going to be able to say to the Inquiry about how the Johnson government fell short.

What the ERG verdict on the Rwanda bill means for Sunak

It’s back to Brexit in parliament this week as Rishi Sunak puts his plan B to salvage the government’s flagship Rwanda scheme to a vote in the Commons. The Safety of Rwanda Bill – which declares that Rwanda is a safe place to send illegal migrants and states that international laws including the Human Rights Convention will have no effect – has its second reading tomorrow. The last time a government bill was defeated at a similar stage was in 1986 on Sunday trading.

The reason defeat is viewed as a possibility is that both the left and right of the party have issues with the policy: the right says it does not go far enough while the left says it goes too far. This lunchtime, the European Research Group met to discuss their options after bringing back their Brexit era so-called ‘star chamber’ of legal experts to assess the proposed bill. The verdict? The ERG say it offers a ‘partial and incomplete solution’ to the problem of legal challenges being used to delay people being flown to Rwanda.

They conclude that the bill does not go ‘far enough to deliver the policy as intended’. The star chamber says that the bill contains no restrictions on bringing legal challenges except over whether Rwanda is not a safe country. Given that individual claims from those seeking to avoid being removed from the UK tend to include a variety of claims, they say it does not prevent legal cases being launched based on a person’s individual circumstances.

So, where does this leave Sunak’s plans? Notably there were about 15 MPs in the meeting – including Sunak’s former home secretary Suella Braverman – which raises questions about how significant a force today’s ERG is. However, recently departed Home Office minister Robert Jenrick will tonight address the New Conservatives – largely made up of 2019 red wall MPs. This group is already sceptical of the bill.

If these groups all come together and decide to actively vote against it then Sunak could in theory come close to the 29 MPs required to vote against in order for it to be defeated. What could get them there is if MPs in the One Nation group also take issue with the bill, be it for completely different reasons. This group will meet this afternoon to discuss whether they should oppose it on the grounds that it goes too far in ignoring international law.

ERG chair Mark Francois suggested today that he has made no decision on how to vote – adding that ‘the bells don’t ring until 7 p.m’. It means that MPs will stretch this out for several hours more as they push for concessions. However, any concessions Sunak gives to one side will only further alienate the other half of his party.

George Santos is demanding $20,000 from Jimmy Kimmel for Cameos

Jimmy Kimmel announced a new segment on his show last Friday, titled, “Will George Santos Say It?,” in which he “pranked” the former congressman by paying for Cameo videos under anonymous names, requesting that Santos read out absurd messages. The first video in the series, “Jimmy Kimmel Pranks George Santos on Cameo,” brought in 1.4 million views in just three days on YouTube; but Santos may have the final laugh.

Having been booted from Congress on December 1, the self-described “People’s Princess” has continued to serve the public through Cameo, a site where fans can pay celebrities for short, personalized messages. Kimmel’s team wondered just what he would say for money, and jumped on the bandwagon, requesting a congratulations video for winning a Florida beef-eating contest, another for the successful cloning of a schnauzer named Adolf and a third video from “Ron,” who was trying to explain to his estranged wife why he burnt down their shed with fireworks. These were just three videos though; Kimmel says he ordered “about a dozen more of these.”

On its face, it’s a pretty lame prank. After all, the “prank” was just giving Santos money to do something he was happy to do, and the segment was basically free, nationwide advertising for Santos’s Cameo. Presumably, Kimmel will next “prank” a Starbucks employee by getting them to write his name on a coffee cup. Santos currently charges $500 a video, and claimed to The Spectator that he is set to hit $350,000 in revenue from it by the end of the month, and has made over 500 videos, with a log over 400 outstanding.

Some in Kimmel’s audience complained about giving the Trump-supporting Santos money for the segment, but it may get even worse for Kimmel, as it’s possible that he owes Santos tens of thousands of dollars.

The Cameo videos of Santos that went viral on Twitter had been requested for personal use, and then posted to Twitter for the delight of the world. By contrast, though Kimmel’s team used the personal use side of Cameo, those videos were purchased for inclusion on his TV show, arguably a commercial purpose, which would be covered by Cameo For Business; a separate branch that grants commercial rights for using Cameo videos, at a far higher rate.

As such, if Cameo’s terms of service are to be believed, Kimmel has underpaid Santos to the tune of tens of thousands on the four videos he has released so far. “The balance is $21,800 and change” according to Santos, which accounts for the videos and 50 percent business rush rate. The total cost of sixteen or so videos, with just a fifteen-day license, would be $40,000 ($60,000 with a rush fee). For a ninety-day license, that would be $99,008 (or $148,512 with a rush fee).

Santos claims that Cameo is supporting his effort for him to be properly recompensed for his efforts; and though it’s hard to take Santos too seriously, given his track record, Cameo has good reason to do so. Cameo has struggled hard in the post-Covid years, and Santos has returned the platform to a relevancy it hasn’t seen since its heyday. More importantly, if they want other creators to use the platform, they have to ensure that their terms of service are enforced. As of writing, Cameo hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

Referring to the title of Kimmel’s series, when The Spectator asked Santos if there were things he wouldn’t say, he was clear; “Oh I have a lot of things that I won’t say. I’ve rejected over sixty Cameos because they just had outrageous shit that money can’t make me say.”

He said that he wouldn’t say “pro-Osama bin Laden stuff” — noting that “I lived through 911 as a New Yorker, and it’s not gonna happen, never” — and “having the background I have, I’m definitely not going to spew an ounce of antisemitism. It’s just not gonna happen.” Santos used to claim he was Jewish, before clarifying he was “Jew-ish”; and he also once claimed that his mother had died in 9/11 (she didn’t).

As he summed up, “There’s no money that could change that, nobody can pay me to change my guiding compass.”

When The Spectator asked Kimmel to address this charge of misusing the platform and shortchanging Santos, he ducked: “The idea that Mr. Santos would claim we shortchanged him and used credit card purchases improperly proves once and for all that the man is a comedy genius.”

But compliments only go so far. If Kimmel doesn’t pay up, Santos will see him in court; and he’s very familiar with courts by this point. “He’s having fun at my expense, but I’m laughing all the way to the bank.”

Santos’s Cameo went viral on Twitter last week thanks to some of the sillier messages he read out. In one clip, Santos helpfully advises that, “Botox keeps you young, fillers keeps you plump… If you have haters, that means you’re doing something right girl!”

In another, Santos tells “Heath” that he is “so proud of you for coming out as a furry,” and that all of his friends and family accept him for his new “beaver-puss” identity (which Santos helpfully informs us is “a beaver and a platypus.”)

Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman even brought attention to his campaign to expel New Jersey senator and reported Egyptian gold hoarder Bob Menendez by paying for a Cameo from Santos, in which he cheerfully encouraged Bobby from Jersey to “stand your ground, sir. And don’t get bogged down by all the haters out there!” Santos replied to the Fetterman campaign’s posting of the video; “I love this! I wish I knew the Bobby in question! LOL.”