Scotland has never had it so good

Thanks to the threat of independence, Scots have – in the words of Harold Macmillan – ‘never had it so good’. Scotland’s current position within the United Kingdom, in which it can hand out many social benefits to its citizens without actually paying for them strongly encourages fiscal profligacy. And why not? Who would argue against greater NHS spending, free prescriptions, or free higher education when the cost will be shared with our English neighbours? 

The effective scrapping of the Universal Credit two-child limit in Scotland is the latest example that shows how the current situation benefits the country. Just last week, the Scottish Fiscal Commission published estimates of the cost for mitigating the Universal Credit two-child limit in the country – a divergence from Westminster policy which is projected to cost Holyrood between £150 and £198 million per year. When enacted in 2026, this will further widen the gap between financial entitlements in Scotland versus England, with Scots already benefitting from unique forms of support such as the Scottish child payment and the pension-age winter heating payment.

This comparative generosity, from a nation not renowned for it, is possible largely due to the favourable initial terms of the block grant given to Scotland by Westminster and the continued use of the Barnett Formula, which determines the allocation of fiscal resources between the Scottish and British government.

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Last year was the third year in a row in which emergency budget revisions were necessary in Scotland. Despite the greater per capita funding available to the Scottish government, Audit Scotland have warned them that they are at risk of having to enact further emergency budget revisions in the future. This is thanks to Holyrood’s failure to account for rising costs in several areas, notably additional social security spending and increased employer National Insurance contributions (they will be compensated for this latter loss by HM Treasury, but probably not fully). With its larger than average government payroll, Scottish finances are also particularly vulnerable to being derailed by public sector pay deals. Finance Secretary Shona Robinson MSP has promised to put an end to these bad fiscal habits, but there are good reasons to expect more of the same.

The looming threat of independence and the resulting desire in Westminster to keep Holyrood sweet, as well as the massive overrepresentation of Scotland’s interests in UK politics, mean that this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon: Scotland will continue to run financial deficits year after year, and England will continue to pick up the tab (cheers for that). The people who gain most from Holyrood’s generous spending are those like me, who have received a very valuable higher education, as well as many other benefits, at the general public’s expense. Many of us then fled south to benefit from the better wages and job prospects of London and the South East.

This is why the Conservatives have little to offer in Scotland: who wants fiscal responsibility when spending now gets you more than you paid for? Not me. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

An independent Scotland would largely have to balance the books, or at least convince sovereign debtholders that they will one day do so. My prediction is that when confronted with the harsh reality of paying their own bills, Scotland’s citizens would quickly become a lot more fiscally conservative. Perhaps this would be better for both: the rest of the United Kingdom would lose a fiscal drain, and Scotland could finally graduate to serious nation status, free to enjoy the powers and responsibilities that come with being an independent country. 

This is my best attempt at a steel man argument for Scottish independence, which doesn’t quite convince me, but comes a lot closer than other arguments I’ve heard. There are however several reasons why I’m still reluctant to burn my Union Jack flags. Ultimately, I don’t think my dream of Scotland becoming a pro-business powerhouse, luring British corporations north with the promise of competitive taxes and effective regulation, is particularly likely. Scotland’s citizens have shown a large preference for re-joining the European Union, which would involve subscribing to their complex regulatory structures, endless bureaucracy, and bizarre industrial policy. As well as dominating Scotland’s political agenda for several years, this would likely involve a hard border with England – an economic non-starter. 

Should Scotland vote to go it alone, there is also the reality of the medium-term fiscal austerity which would be required to make it credit-worthy. That’s not to mention the considerable costs that come with any of the currency options available to it, be that joining the euro or otherwise. These economic arguments, among many others, are why I still think Scotland is correct to spurn independence. As a resident of England, who plans to continue living there, I can, however, say with relative confidence that I would be better off if Scotland went its own way. Paying them off to stick around is nonsensical. If forced to confront the economic realities of a large fiscal deficit and an already high tax burden, Holyrood might think twice about its commitment to scrapping the two-child benefit limit.

Tulip Siddiq’s resignation was a matter of when, not if

Just two weeks into the new year and Keir Starmer has suffered his first ministerial resignation of 2025. Tulip Siddiq has resigned from her role as the economic secretary to the Treasury, following an investigation by the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus into corruption claims. Magnus was tasked to look into allegations surrounding Siddiq’s links to properties linked to her aunt, who was recently deposed as Bangladesh’s prime minister following an uprising against her two-decade long leadership.

In a letter to Keir Starmer, Magnus concludes that Siddiq did not break the ministerial code. However, he goes on to say that it is ‘regrettable’ the Labour politician was not ‘more alert’ to the ‘potential reputational risks’. As a result, Magnus says Siddiq ought to ‘consider her ongoing responsibilities in the light of this’. Right on cue, Siddiq has done just this and stepped down on the grounds that ‘continuing in my role as economic secretary to the Treasury is likely to be a distraction from the work of government’.

In a way, this news is rather unsurprising. Within the Labour party, it was largely seen as a matter of when, not if Siddiq would resign. The story has been bubbling away for some time but ratcheted up at the weekend when Bangladesh’s new leader, Muhammad Yunus, told the Sunday Times that Siddiq should apologise over reports she had lived in London properties with links to her aunt. What’s more, it was becoming clear that her position was untenable given part of her brief was anti-corruption, and she was facing questions linked to a corruption scandal overseas. Add to that the fact that Siddiq was meant to accompany Reeves to China last week but cancelled, and it’s clear she was unable to carry out the basics of her job as a result of the row.

So, what does this mean for Starmer, Siddiq and the Treasury? Her successor has already been announced in the form of Emma Reynolds, the experienced Labour MP. However, that appointment is already raising some eyebrows as the Labour government looks for closer ties with China. Before the 2024 election, Reynolds is reported to have worked as a lobbyist trying to keep China out of the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme. With Reynolds moving from her previous post from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), 2024-intake member Torsten Bell, formerly at the Resolution Foundation, has been promoted to parliamentary secretary in the Treasury and under-secretary in DWP. During his time at the Resolution Foundation, Bell recommended a range of tax changes such as scrapping the 5p cut in fuel duty. ‘He’s definitely one of the tall poppies of the 2024 intake’, says a colleague.

Some on the Labour left have been quick to point out that Siddiq was allowed to stay in her role longer than Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, who resigned the day after reports over alleged phone fraud were published in the paper. Notably Starmer makes clear in his letter to Siddiq that he would like to see her back in his government – the same suggestion was not made to Haigh. This is put down to a few factors. First, there is more warmth in No. 10 towards Siddiq than Haigh, who was seen as an odd fit in the cabinet. Second, Siddiq is a constituency neighbour to Starmer in London and there are close links between the party to the Awami League, the party Siddiq’s aunt led. However, in the end the story proved too big to ignore.

Listen to more on Coffee House Shots, The Spectator’s daily politics podcast:

Francis reveals himself to be a pope of two halves

The Pope’s autobiography is out and it’s still not entirely clear why. Carlo Musso, the ‘co-author’ of Hope: The Autobiography, says that it was originally intended to be published after his death, but on account of ‘the new Jubilee of Hope’ (the Jubilee Year), and the ‘circumstances of this moment’ (i.e. him not dying), it’s been brought forward.

Truth to tell it reads a bit scrappily, more like a series of interviews, with occasional errors – the Arian heresy, for instance, is not the ‘Aryan’ heresy, presumably a Hitlerian thing. The book is up to date, taking on board his encounter with clerical sex abuse survivors in Belgium last year (he doesn’t mention his brutal going-over by his horrible Belgian hosts) and his meeting a few months ago with transexuals.

For all that, the book covers quite a lot that he’s talked about before, but there are things of interest here. In case you are wondering, he has put a resignation letter in the hands of a papal chamberlain for such time as he is medically unfit to do the job, as Paul VI did, apparently, and would in that case remain in Rome, like Benedict, as pope emeritus. 

But apart from a bad knee, which means he has to use a wheelchair, he’s still keen to keep going. And just as he rather meanly stripped out the flummery on his taking office as pope (he turned down the scarlet shoes, the gold cross, the Latin sermon, the velvet mozzzetta, the linen rochet – ‘they were not for me’) he has planned a similarly pared down funeral. He’s not going to be buried in St Peter’s but in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, close to the statue of the Virgin called the Regina della Pace. ‘No catafalque, no ceremony for the closure of the casket, nor the depositing of the cypress casket into a second of lead and a third of oak.’ Look, you want to say, it’s not all about you. The symbolism of these things is intended for the viewers, not the man in the catafalque. But Francis is a bit of a puritan.

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There are two constituencies who are not wholly pleased with the Pope; with this book, they’re not going to be any happier. One is the liberal wing, which would like the blessing of same sex unions and the ordination of women. The other is liturgical conservatives.

On Fiducia Supplicans, the blessing of gay couples and the divorced and remarried, which went down so very well with the Orthodox churches and in Africa, he is unrepentant. ‘It is the people who are blessed, not the relationship’, he says. Except that’s not how it looks to a congregation. And he was moved by the visit to the Vatican of a group of transexuals: ‘Everyone in the Church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender.’

But he is very down on gender theory ‘that seeks to cancel differences on the pretext of making everyone equal’. He is also very down indeed on surrogate pregnancies, ‘a global business based on the exploitation of a situation of material necessity for the mother’, and good for him. Likewise, he hates euthanasia – interestingly, he condemns it in the context of RH Benson’s Lord of the World (‘I was deeply struck when I read it’) in which the dystopian England of the future has euthanasia on request (we’ve pretty much got to that point).

But he’s not going to be ordaining women. On female ordination to the diaconate, he says it’s a matter for study (he subcontracted that to a commission) and won’t be ordaining women to the priesthood and episcopate either because it would only aggravate the problem of clericalism (suck that up, liberals). Instead, he says that the answer is to give women more responsibility within the Church, as he has already done, and ‘enhancing the Marian principle so it is even more important to the Church than the Petrine principle’. In other words, he wants to emphasise the yin of the Virgin Mary as opposed to the yang of St Peter. He says: ‘The Church is female – it is not male.’ Anyway, no dice for the feminists.

But it’s when he gets to the question of the traditionalist Tridentine Latin mass that his authoritarian streak comes out. His predecessor, Benedict XV, came to a sensible compromise on the celebration of the rite whereby it could be done in various circumstances with the permission of a bishop. Now it’s practically impossible since it requires direct permission from the hostile Vatican Dicastery for Divine Worship. ‘It is curious,’ he says, ‘to see this fascination for what is not understood, for what appears somewhat hidden, and seems also at times to interest the younger generation. This rigidity is often accompanied by elegant and costly tailoring, lace, fancy trimmings, rochets. Not a taste for tradition but clerical ostentation….sectarian worldliness.’

I think he’s trying to say it’s just camp homosexuals who fancy the whole Tridentine thing. Except the attraction to the traditional Latin mass, which goes back half a millennium and in essentials far further, is shared by many intelligent younger Catholics. The artist David Jones once called the old mass the greatest work of art in history. But Francis is having none of it.

He cites the example of an American bishop who, approached by two young seminarians asking for permission to learn to celebrate mass in Latin, told them to go away first and learn Vietnamese and Spanish, on the basis that these languages were spoken by their parishioners. I would have told this authoritarian episcopal freak where to get off, but then I’m not a candidate for priesthood. Francis is keen on synodality, on the listening church, but presumably mostly when it’s saying what he wants to hear.

And this sums up the curate’s egg character of this pope: when he’s good, he’s very, very good, and when he’s bad, he’s horrid. But he deserves credit for really hating war and weapons of war. He goes on about it constantly in this book, and it comes from the heart. He’s practically the only person in public office who still minds about nuclear weapons – he wanted to be sent on a mission to Japan as a young Jesuit and he’s still obsessed by the horrors of Hiroshima. Funnily enough, the pope he brings to mind here is a previous Benedict – the fifteenth – the one who tried to bring an end to the Great War. He failed of course, and Francis didn’t have any luck offering himself as a mediator in the war in Ukraine either.

Oh and he is fond of jokes. Here is one he gives from Justin Welby, as Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘”Do you know what the difference is between a liturgist and a terrorist? With the terrorist, you can negotiate…” It made me laugh out loud.’

Full timeline: the events that led to Tulip Siddiq’s resignation

And now we have it: Tulip Siddiq has resigned from her government post as City minister after pressure piled on the Labour MP over her links to her aunt and former authoritarian premier of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina. After a tumultuous few weeks, the government’s ethics adviser issued his conclusion about Siddiq’s conduct – leading the Treasury minister to quit her job. Dear oh dear…

So how did things get to this point for Siddiq? Well, Mr S has compiled a handy timeline of events to make sense of it all.

18 December 2024

All eyes are drawn to the government’s anti-corruption minister after the Labour MP was named in an, er, corruption probe. Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission has launched an investigation into the lefty politician after she was accused of helping Hasina siphon off large sums of money intended for eight infrastructure projects. Siddiq denies the allegations.

22 December 2024

It emerges that Siddiq has been interviewed by the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team over the allegations she helped her aunt broker a deal with Russia and embezzle up to £3.9 billion from a nuclear energy project in Bangladesh. The Labour MP continues to deny any involvement.

29 December 2024

The Tories call for Siddiq to be recused of her anti-corruption duties until the allegations against her are cleared up. Home Affairs spokesperson Matt Vickers fumed that:

Keir Starmer must ensure Tulip is recused from all sanctions and anti-corruption policy decisions immediately while questions about her personal dealings remain unanswered.

3 January 2025

The Financial Times reveals that Siddiq had been given a two-bedroom flat near King’s Cross in 2004, also free of charge. In fact, it was donated by developer Abdul Motalif who has – you guessed it – links to Bangladesh’s Awami League party led by Hasina.

5 January 2025

New year, same troubles. The weekend before parliament returns from its Christmas break, new reports concerning Siddiq splash the Sunday papers. The Sunday Times reveals that the Treasury minister lived in a Hampstead flat gifted to her then-teenage sister Azmina by Bangladeshi lawyer Moin Ghani – for free. Ghani, it transpired, had represented Siddiq’s aunt’s government in the past.

And the Mail on Sunday is in on the action too – revealing that the paper had repeatedly quizzed Siddiq in the past on whether the King’s Cross flat (now worth £700,000) had been gifted to her. The newspaper claims the Labour MP had denied this, instead insisting her parents had purchased the property for her. Yet it later came out that the apartment was indeed given to her by developer Motalif as an ‘act of gratitude’. How curious…

Meanwhile Siddiq faces growing pressure from politicians to clarify the matter. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp calls on the Labour MP to ‘explain the source of her wealth’ while a senior Labour official tells the FT that the party leadership is finding it ‘hard to defend’ her financial affairs.

6 January 2025

Siddiq refers herself to the government’s adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, over her property holdings following the weekend’s scrutiny. In her letter to Magnus, the anti-corruption MP is adamant that she has ‘done nothing wrong’.

Sir Keir Starmer defends his City minister at an early morning press conference, telling journalists that Siddiq had ‘acted entirely properly’ by approaching the ethics adviser. The PM adds: ‘I’ve got confidence in her and the process that will now be happening.’

7 January 2025

The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit has asked the country’s banks for details of accounts linked to the City minister – with the organisation also looking for information relating to Siddiq’s family members. ‘No evidence has been presented for these allegations,’ the Labour MP’s spokesperson said, adding: ‘Tulip has not been contacted by anyone on the matter and totally refutes the claims.’

11 January 2025

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch calls for Siddiq to be sacked, taking to Twitter to write that the Labour minister had become ‘a distraction when the government should be focused on dealing with the financial problems it has created’.

13 January 2025

The anti-corruption minister receives more bad news when the Times reports that Siddiq had been named in, um, yet another probe by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission. Investigators are claiming Siddiq ‘reportedly used her influence and special powers’ to influence her aunt and former authoritarian premier of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina to allocate land to family members. UK Anti-Corruption Coalition questions why Siddiq was still in her government post, adding the Labour MP ‘currently has a serious conflict of interests’. The Labour minister denies these further allegations.

14 January 2025

Magnus concludes his independent review into the Labour MP. The ethics adviser notes that there was ‘a lack of records and lapse of time’ that impacted his probe, adding that he was not ‘able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters referred to in the media’. Sir Laurie writes, however, that in relation to Siddiq’s King’s Cross flat ‘the public were inadvertently misled about the identity of the donor of this gift in her replies to queries in 2022’. Concluding, the standards adviser remarks that ‘it is regrettable [Siddiq] was not more alert to the potential repetitional risks arising from her close family’s association with Bangladesh’. Oo er. It hardly lets her off scot-free…

Siddiq quits from her role as City minister. She makes the announcement on Twitter after informing the Prime Minister, in a letter that focuses on Sir Laurie’s conclusion that the Labour MP has ‘not breached the ministerial code’. Responding, Starmer says that it is ‘with sadness’ that he accepts her resignation.

An independent review has confirmed that I have not breached the Ministerial Code and there is no evidence to suggest I have acted improperly.

Nonetheless, to avoid distraction for the Government, I have resigned as City Minister.

Here is my full letter to the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/kZeWZfEsei

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) January 14, 2025

Why Tulip Siddiq had to go

In 1996, I flew to Dhaka to meet Sheikh Hasina, the newly elected prime minister of Bangladesh, to discuss her economic strategy. It was not a pleasant experience. Hasina was humourless, arrogant and bitter – by a long stretch, the most unlikeable politician I’ve met in the sub-continent. By contrast her diminutive niece, Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s anti-corruption minister who has just resigned over her ties to her aunt, is a charmer. 

To be fair to Hasina, she had excuses for her unattractive demeanour. There was a singular focus on her political raison d’etre – to avenge the brutal assassination of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh’s independence movement and its first president. Pakistan’s attempt to crush Mujibur’s revolt was arguably the most egregious genocide of the second half of the 20th century. In the early hours of 25 March 1971, the army swept through Dhaka, slaughtering the leaders of Mujibur’s Awami League party and the pro-independence ‘intelligentsia’ in their homes.

Later the inquiry into the so-called ‘Night of the Intellectuals’ would conclude that ‘it was as if a ferocious animal having been kept chained and starved was suddenly let loose’. In the course of the genocide over several months, 200,000 women were raped, with some kept as sex slaves in army cantonments. A total of three million people died, including academics, scientists, teachers, lawyers, students, and non-Muslim minorities such as Hindus and Christians. Time magazine described Dhaka as ‘a city of the dead’.

Even after India invaded Pakistan and smashed its army, thereby securing Mujibur’s dream of an independent Bangladesh, the bloodletting did not end. 

Mujibur, the charismatic revolutionary leader, became a repressive and tyrannical socialist ruler. On 15 August 1975, four army majors stormed his house and gunned him down with 17 members of his family. Sheikh Hasina, who was 27 at the time and was visiting Europe, survived. In 1981, she took the reins of the Awami League. She morbidly preserved her father’s house with blood and brain matter splattered on the walls. 

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Hasina’s first period of office lasted five years but her second term, following four successive election victories, albeit strongly disputed by international observers, ended last August after 15 years of rule. Mass street demonstrations, which incurred some 2,000 deaths and 20,000 people injured, chased her from power. She fled to India. 

Hasina had reneged on her electoral pledges to combat corruption, to ensure an independent judiciary and to strengthen human rights. Like Mujibur, she turned into a nepotistic tin-pot dictator plagued by allegations of corruption. Bangladeshi journalist Arafat Kabir has posited that she lived in delusional bubble: ‘As the scion of Bangladesh’s founding father, she had cultivated an image of herself as an unassailable, almost deity-like figure – the undisputed daughter of democracy.’

Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize winning economist who popularised the concept of ‘microfinance’, persuaded Bangladesh’s president to appoint him as chief adviser in the country’s interim government and he has embarked on a cleanup with gusto. Hasina now faces more than 100 charges, including for murder and theft (allegations her associates say are ‘baseless’). One of her closest confidants, Salman Rahman, whose family controls Beximco Group, Bangladesh’s most powerful conglomerate, was arrested soon after she fled. Bangladeshi businessmen who have built vast property empires in London through offshore holding companies, have also been arrested.  

At Yunus’s insistence, Hasina’s whole family, Tulip Siddiq included, were drawn into the criminal investigations. Focus was given to Siddiq’s alleged ties to a bribery scandal involving Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power corporation. Yunus is also demanding the return of London properties that were lent or given to Siddiq by Hasina’s associates. This was not a great look for Sir Keir. While the independent advisor on ministerial standards found that Siddiq had not broken the ministerial code, she should have been ‘more alert to the potential reputational risks – both to her and the government – arising from her close family’s association with Bangladesh.’

It was clear that Siddiq’s political career was over. But the Labour party and Sir Keir defended the indefensible. Even now, the Prime Minister has said the ‘door remains open’ to her in future if she wishes to rejoin government.

Siddiq has consistently denied any wrongdoing, but even if she is cleared of direct involvement in her aunty’s alleged racketeering, given her lifelong interest in politics and her enthusiastic public support for Hasina, how could she possibly not have known about Hasina’s dodgy elections, her nepotism and her reputation for corruption? Did she not question the reason for her aunty’s associates throwing properties her way? 

And furthermore, how could Siddiq and the Labour party have been unaware that, in November 2023, more than 170 global figures, including former president Barack Obama, had written to Sheikh Hasina to urge her to end the ‘continuous judicial harassment’ of Muhammad Yunus? It just stretches credulity that Siddiq and the Labour party did not know that aunty Hasina was a rotten apple. 

As Yunus advised Siddiq: ‘Maybe you didn’t realise it [Hasina’s corruption], but now you do. You should say: “Sorry, I didn’t know it [at] that time, I seek forgiveness from the people that I did this, and I resign.”’ Siddiq may not have apologised, but she has at least done the right thing now by resigning. 

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Hegseth in the hornet’s nest

Pete Hegseth was the first cabinet nominee to the breach, leading Donald Trump’s collection of outsiders, populists and hellraisers into the Capitol Hill combat they can all expect to navigate in the coming weeks. And in terms of a first confrontation with the opponent, Hegseth handled his mission manfully — taking the slings and arrows from the Democratic side of the aisle with relative ease. At one point, exasperated Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal — you’ll remember him from not serving in Vietnam and falsely claiming that he did — said, “I don’t dispute your communication skills.” And how could he? Hegseth seemed more than ready to address the accusations from Senate Democrats head on, and the Republicans on the committee seemed unperturbed by their attacks.

For those unfamiliar with Senate hearings like this, the Democrats were shockingly disorganized and spastic. The aim of hearings like this should not be grandstanding or shaking a fist at the nominee — it should be a focused, organized attempt to undermine them and create more questions around their record, questions designed to lead to Republican follow-up that begs more research, delay and investigation. For comparison, recall how Democrats achieved this, albeit briefly, with a canny manipulation of Senator Jeff Flake during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. But today, rather than hammer away at one particular point of emphasis designed to pull at the potential gap between Hegseth and someone like Joni Ernst, Senate Democrats were flailing, leveling scattershot attacks that seemed more like partisan talking points than an actual case.

Before the hearing began, the staff-level spin to Punchbowl was that the more partisan Democratic women on the committee — Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Mazie Hirono, Jeanne Shaheen, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jacky Rosen and Elissa Slotkin — would be focused on allegations about Hegseth’s behavior and his opposition to women in combat. But Warren tried to make it about hypocrisy, saying that Hegseth’s opposition to generals going through a revolving door from government service into the military industrial complex was a bad thing was a rule he wouldn’t follow himself. “I’m not a general,” Hegseth responded, to laughter from those in the committee room — and Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama jokingly addressed him as a “general” when the time shifted to him. The moment for any point-scoring was lost.

The questioning from Duckworth and Hirono was no better. Duckworth demanded to know what organizations Hegseth had audited, as if the Pentagon’s inability to sustain an audit is something that would require him to don a green eyeshade himself, then demanded he name the members of ASEAN, who she described as part of potential negotiated military agreements. The only problem: ASEAN is an economic trade alliance, having nothing to do with the SecDef job. And then Hirono, displaying her IQ, asked a series of questions about obeying unlawful orders — to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal by force, to get drunk on the job, to shoot protesters in the legs — and yelled whenever Hegseth began to answer that he would do exactly the thing she claimed.

The only senators who seemed to stick to the line of predetermined questioning were Shaheen and Gillibrand, who blasted Hegseth for comments about women in combat and suggested he was denigrating their service or waffling on the issue in front of the committee. This is the only real line of attack — that Hegseth is a Neanderthal, an anti-woman figure at the moment when almost a fifth of the US military is female — that is consistent with what Democratic staffers had intimated before the hearing. When you have such a big gap between the questions staffers said their member would ask and the questions they actually asked, something went wrong in hearing prep.

As responses go, few can rival that of Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who unleashed on his fellow members of the Senate in a way rarely seen in public:

I’m just making a point because there’s a lot about qualifications, and I think it is so hypocritical of senators, especially on the other side of the aisle, to be talking about his qualifications — not going to be the Secretary of Defense — and yet your qualifications aren’t any better. You guys aren’t any more qualified to be a senator than I am, except we are lucky enough to be here.

Let me read what the secretary of defense is, because I Googled it. Really, it is hard to see, but in general, the US secretary of defense position is “filled by a civilian.” That’s it. If you have served in the US Armed Forces and have been in the service, you have to be retired for at least seven years, and Congress can waive that.

And then there’s the question that the senator from Massachusetts brought up about serving on a board inside the military industry, and yet your own secretary, who you all voted for — Secretary Austin — we had to put a waiver on because he stepped off the board of Raytheon. But I guess that is OK because that is a Democrat secretary of defense. But we so quickly forget about that.

Can Senator Kaine — or I guess I better use “the senator from Virginia” — start bringing up the fact that, what if he showed up drunk to your job? How many senators have shown up drunk to vote at night?

Have any of you guys asked them to step down or resign from their job? And don’ t tell me you haven’ t seen it, because I know you have. And how many senators do you know who have gotten a divorce for cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down? No? It is for show. Make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man has made a mistake. And you want to sit there and say that he is not qualified? Give me a joke [sic]. It is so ridiculous that you guys hold yourselves to this higher standard and you forget you’ve got a big plank in your own eyes.

If the worst Democrats can offer as opposition is the scene that played out in the Senate Armed Services Committee today, the Trump cabinet slate is likely to be confirmed en masse, Hegseth included.

No. 10 blocks beaver plans over ‘Tory legacy’ fears

Sir Keir Starmer’s army were adamant that theirs would be a ‘serious’ government of ‘grown ups’ – and yet it seems petty politics is back in vogue. It now transpires that No. 10 has blocked plans to bring the beaver back to Britain because officials view it as an, er, ‘Tory legacy’. Talk about wild insecurities, eh?

Former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson was perhaps one of the most vocal advocates of the policy – seeking permission for his father to release the animals on his estate before pledging in 2021 to ‘Build Back Beaver!’. But no idea is a good plan if it’s a Tory one, it seems. According to the Guardian‘s sources, No. 10 officials put a halt to the move – which would have allowed conservationists to release beavers into the wild to live freely and repopulate – over concerns about it originating from the Conservative party. How very interesting.

The rather odd turnaround comes after the government’s nature watchdog Natural England spent time drawing up reintroduction plans. In fact, even though the proposals were signed off by Environment Secretary Steve Reed, Downing Street officials still intervened to block the beaver bid. Forget all the benefits the animals can bring to local wildlife – it seems it’ll take more than the promise of ‘ecosystem engineers‘ to persuade the Starmtroopers to abandon their partisan politics…

Natural England bosses have been left seething, according to the Grauniad, with their years of hard work looking to amount to nothing. The Wildlife Trust’s Rob Stoneman fumed that ‘it’s extremely frustrating that wild beaver licences have been blocked’, citing the rodents as a handy solution to Britain’s freshwater crisis, while leading nature charity bosses have written to Reed in a last-ditch attempt to urge him to push through the policy.

For its part, a government spokesperson insisted:

This story is categorically untrue. The government is working with Natural England to review options on species reintroduction, including beavers.

Not that this has convinced everyone, however, with wildlife charities left rather jittery about the reported row-back. It’s just one damn thing after another with this Labour lot…

Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing is just the first episode

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, military veteran and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, had his first hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.

In his opening remarks, the author of The War on Warriors admitted that he is an unorthodox pick. “It is true that I don’t have a similar biography to defense secretaries of the last thirty years. But, as President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly ‘the right credentials’  — whether they are retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives — and where has it gotten us?” his opening statement read. “It’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”

Flexing his military experience in “Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and in the streets of Washington, DC” and thanking his family, colleagues and Jesus Christ, the nominee promised to “reestablish deterrence,” “rebuild our military” and, most notably, “restore the warrior ethos.” Hegseth’s focus on reclaiming the military’s lethality, and disposing of political initiatives that distract from such a goal, has become his trademark.

It is this perspective, and his personal war against DEI, that have inspired opposition against his nomination. Not surprisingly, some of the toughest questions he received during the hearing centered on this topic.

Following reports suggesting that Hegseth opposed having women in combat roles, Republican senator Joni Ernst, an Iraq veteran representing Iowa, asked the nominee whether he would commit to keeping female troops in these roles. “Women will have access to ground combat roles, given the standards remain high,” he responded. “And we will have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases.”

A quotation of Hegseth’s had been circulating that might make some think that he favors something akin to a ban on women in the military. “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” he said on a podcast. “It hasn’t made us more effective.” Though in the same podcast, Hegseth clarified his policy position. “I’m OK with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are, for everybody, and if there’s some, you know, hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion. But that is not what’s happened. What has happened is the standards have lowered.”

During the hearing, Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat, asked Hegseth whether he knew that “being drunk at work is prohibited for servicemembers under the USMJ?” That’s the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “Senator, those are multiple, false, anonymous reports peddled by NBC News that run directly contradictory to the dozens of men and women at Fox News Channel,” Hegseth replied, as Hirono interrupted to say that she wasn’t hearing an answer. The report being referenced here suggests that, according to ten current or former Fox News employees, Hegseth drank in ways that concerned his colleagues. 

Fiery, right? Well, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia took it up a notch, making things very personal. “I assume that in each of your weddings, you’ve pledged to be faithful to your wife. You’ve taken an oath to do that, haven’t you?” Kaine asked the twice-divorced nominee. “Senator, as I’ve acknowledged to everyone in this committee, I’m not a perfect person, not claiming to be.”

Angry at these lines of questioning, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, went ballistic on his colleagues. “How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night?” Senator Mullin asked. “How many senators do you know who have gotten a divorce for cheating on their wives?”

“Did you ask them to step down? No. It’s for show. You guys make a big show and point out the hypocrisy, because the man’s made a mistake. And you want to sit up there and say he’s not qualified? Give me a joke [sic]. It’s so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself to a higher standard, and you forget you’ve got a big plank in your eye.”

Following Trump’s expressed desire to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, Hirono also pressed Hegseth on whether he would back military operations in the two countries. Refusing to give a clear yes, Hegseth said that he would never diminish Trump’s “strategic ambiguity.”

In an exchange with Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, previously considered a potential candidate for Hegseth’s role, the nominee touched on the women in combat question too. “In those ground combat roles, what is true is the weight on your back doesn’t change. The weight of the bravo machine gun you might have to carry does not change. Whether it is a man or woman, they have to meet the same high standards.”

Senator Cotton also asked Hegseth if he supported Israel’s war efforts in Gaza. “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas,” he replied. 

In another exchange with Republican senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Hegseth said that troops who were fired for refusing to take the “experimental” coronavirus vaccine will be “apologized to and reinstated with pay and rank.”

Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat representing Rhode Island, referring to a time when Hegseth apparently called a JAG officer a “jag off,” asked the nominee: “Would you explain what a ‘jag off’ is?” “I don’t think I need to, sir,” Hegseth replied. “Why not?” Reed interjected. “Because the men and women watching understand,” Hegseth said before proceeding to give his definition. “It would be a JAG officer [sic] who puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters — their promotions, their medals in front of having the back of those who are making the tough calls in the frontlines.” 

Also desperately attempting to be the funniest in the chamber, Senator Tim Sheehy, newly-elected Republican from Montana, asked Hegseth how many genders there were. “Senator, there are two genders,” Hegseth replied. “I know that well, I’m a ‘she-he,’ so I’m on board,” Sheehy quipped.

Then, for a change of tone, Senator Sheehy asked: “What is the diameter of the rifle round fired out of an M4A1 rifle?” “That’s a 5.56,” Hegseth replied. “How many push-ups can you do?” “I did five sets of forty-seven this morning.” Other very military-specific questions followed, helping Hegseth sound qualified.

“What kind of batteries do you put in your night-vision goggles?” Senator Sheehy inquired. “Duracell?” a laughing Hegseth replied.

A particularly powerful statement on the bloating of the military leadership came from Hegseth out of an exchange with Republican senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. “We won World War Two with seven four-star generals. Today, we have forty-four four-star generals,” Hegseth said, depicting an inverse relationship between wins in the battlefield and the expansion of top brass military leadership. “We don’t need more bureaucracy at the top, we need more war fighters empowered at the bottom.”

Rumor has it that Hegseth already has the votes to become the next defense secretary, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune reportedly telling Trump that he believes his nominee will make it through the process. Surely, Hegseth’s performance in this hearing, as a man with much experience with the cameras, will make it easier to push him through what’s left of the process.

While the hearing was fiery at times, his confirmation is only the beginning, with seven other hearings, including those of Governor Kristi Noem and Senator Marco Rubio, scheduled for tomorrow. This one may not prove the testiest of them all, with the confirmation hearings of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel — all arguably more unorthodox in their stances, if not their résumés, than Hegseth — still not scheduled. Let the games begin.

Rachel Reeves is getting ready for the next market test

Rachel Reeves did her best to keep today’s China visit statement on topic. The Chancellor wanted to talk about ‘cooperation’, ‘competing where our interests differ,’ her efforts to break down market barriers and the £600 million she secured in investment. But other MPs had other ideas. 

‘I know the Chancellor has been away,’ said the Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. ‘So let me update her on the mess she left behind.’ So began the battle between the Chancellor – to stay on topic – and her opposition to bring up the long list of economic woes that have come to the forefront this week: not just the substantial rise in borrowing costs, but the no-growth, confidence-bust economy that has spurred on whispers of a possible recession or ‘stagflation’, that would see growth remain flat, inflation rise again, and unemployment to tick up, too.

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A few of the numbers stung. On the £600 million secured from China, which Labour is championing as a big win, Strive pointed out that this £120 million a year paled in comparison to the additional £12 billion worth of borrowing costs that is thought to have been added to the government’s tab, thanks to gilts rising to levels surpassing the height of the mini-Budget drama. Daisy Cooper, Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, also landed a somewhat surprising blow, when she pointed out that this £600 million accounted for just 27.5 hours of NHS spending over the course of the Parliament. Reeves tried to avoid getting too drawn on her Budget or rising borrowing costs, pointing instead to ‘£600 million pounds of tangible benefits for British businesses trading overseas.’

Who won the battle? While the constant reminders of jittery bond markets and stagnant growth were not comfortable for the Chancellor, Reeves entered the chamber confidently – and she left with confidence too. She did not hesitate to mention Liz Truss on multiple occasions, still happy to claim that she ‘crashed the economy’, despite both leaders suffering from a rise in borrowing costs, thanks in large part to their substantial spending plans. Reeves seemed to be making a calculation: even now, Tory MPs are unlikely to make any robust defence of that mini-Budget or push back too strongly on the claim that it did damage to the economy. It was the right calculation from Reeves.

This meant it was very difficult to completely land a blow on the Chancellor, who robustly came back on the points put to her by opposition parties. What was noticeable, however, was the answers she dodged: mainly questions asked by her own party.

In a bid to support the Chancellor, there were plenty of questions asked by Labour MPs that were set up to defend Reeves’s record. But it was clear Reeves wasn’t going to be pulled into making any kind of spending promise she could not keep. Praising the Chancellor for her approach to the public finances, chair of the Treasury Select Committee Dame Meg Hillier mentioned that, unlike the Tories, Labour had managed to avoid austerity. In response, Reeves simply reiterated her fiscal rules and insisted ‘we remain committed to those fiscal rules.’

This was not the only occasion Reeves avoided spending questions. Asked directly about cuts, the Chancellor said she was ‘not going to write five year’s worth of Budgets,’ while also reiterating that she was ‘absolutely committed to meeting those fiscal rules.’

This is not simply about avoiding any concrete commitments – it signals some difficult decisions are coming. For any serious attempt to get these borrowing costs back down to manageable levels (especially considering the international pressures, like Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs, pushing these costs up), Reeves is going to have to signal strongly to markets that she is capable of fiscal prudence. That next test in the Spending Review, which the Prime Minister, in the wake of this week’s economic news, has insisted will be ‘ruthless’. 

This is likely to cause more turmoil with the Labour party than anywhere else. But it is also going to be necessary to put an end to market turbulence, as it turns out investors are still not relaxed about Britain trying to borrow vastly more when the national debt hovers around 100 per cent of GDP. 

‘To go or not to go, that is now a question,’ said Stride, comparing Labour’s economic record so far to the great Shakespearean tragedy. That has been a question this week, but is probably a less pertinent question after today. The Chancellor did not look like she was going anywhere. Indeed, she was preparing for the next steps. But taking those steps won’t be easy. Political pain – especially inside the party – is only just beginning.

Why Westminster is wrong about gilt yields

It’s gilts season at Westminster. This is one of those unpredictable events, like the passing of a comet, that sees the residents of the political village staring at the skies and imputing all sorts of divine causes to the curious flashing lights they see there.  

Because of the ongoing excitement in the markets, a lot of political folk have, in the last few days, become authoritative commentators on yield curves.

Welcome to the party, guys. A very long time ago, I covered bond markets for a City newswire, and hated pretty much every minute of it. I claim no particular expertise as a result, but I am still confident in saying two things about Westminster’s current excitement over gilt yields.

First, almost no one involved in or commenting on British politics (I include myself) knows enough about bonds to offer a wholly credible analysis of any particular market movement.

Second, and consequently, anyone who asserts that rising gilt yields are entirely caused of Rachel Reeves and her Budget should be ignored because they a) don’t know what they’re talking about b) are pushing a political agenda c) both of the above.

This is especially true of anyone who argues that current bond market movements are similar to those following Liz Truss’s mini-Budget debacle.

The central flaw of much Westminster bond market analysis (and much else besides) is to explain everything by reference to short-term UK politics, and overlook bigger things happening elsewhere.

So anyone who wants to argue that Reeves’ tax-raising Budget spooked the bond markets should be asked: why have UK gilt yields have moved pretty much exactly in line with US Treasury yields?  In other words, the same investors who are selling gilts are also selling US bonds – and selling US bonds is clearly not a comment on British fiscal policies or Britain’s Chancellor.

As the chart below shows, the spread (gap) between US and UK bond yields is at its long-term average.  Investors are buying and selling UK and US bonds in broadly similar ways and for fairly similar reasons, in other words – not because of some unique British conditions.

This was not the case in autumn 2022, when the Trust administration created some unique (and uniquely bad) British conditions, by attacking the independent institutions that help reassure investors, committing truckloads of money to tax cuts, and generally lacking political stability. See the 2022/23 spikes above the line on the chart.

So why are UK borrowing costs rising now? Back in my unhappy City days, I learned one useful, universal explanation for any market movement:  it’s complicated, there probably isn’t a single cause, and anyone who tells you there is one is selling something – or trying to explain to their boss why they just lost money on a trade.

That said, here’s one factor to consider in rising yields: investors think big Western economies are in long-term trouble because their politicians aren’t dealing with their underlying problems.  

Here I recommend Westminster bond sages start using the phrase ‘bear steepening’ to add cod-credibility to their commentary. This means that the yields on longer-dated bonds are rising faster than the yields on shorter-term ones, because investors think that longer-term loans are a worse bet.  

That’s because they think that in the long run (20+ years), the UK and US governments will have to do even more borrowing to fund themselves, flooding the market with bonds and pushing down prices. (More supply means lower prices.  And lower bond prices mean higher yields.)

The future implied by bear steepening is one where the UK economy grows very slowly, delivering weak tax revenues, forcing governments to run eternal deficits to fund unreformed public services.  And rising bond yields mean the costs of those deficits go up and up, potentially pushing those economies into a ‘doom loop’ of high borrowing and low growth. 

Mike Riddell, a bond investor at Fidelity International,  is among the market participants who argue that current bond movements are about something much bigger and badder than any one finance minister’s plans:

It’s not about inflation concerns, where the market’s medium-term inflation expectations are little changed since the beginning of November. Investors are instead demanding a higher-risk premia or ‘term premia’ to compensate them for owning longer-dated government bonds.

The obvious implication of this is that it’s just got a lot more expensive for everyone to refinance their debt. If this selloff continues, it’s going to push deficits wider over the long, which then risks a doom loop since deficits need to be funded by ever more sovereign issuance.

When we return to a UK political perspective, we see that this isn’t particularly positive for Rachel Reeves. It suggests that the markets don’t believe that she is going to resolve the structural economic problems that she inherited: weak productivity and growth; ever-more costly public services.  

That is a grim verdict for the markets to pass, but it’s not, ultimately, a comment on Reeves or the Starmer government, since those structural problems have been decades in the making, as a succession of chancellors ducked the challenge of trying to match tax revenues to public expenditure. 

Indeed, Reeves’s tax-raising Budget was arguably the most significant step towards fiscal consolidation the UK has seen for more than a decade; it will very likely be followed by some squeezing of public spending. That squeeze would be politically painful but might well offer some confidence to bears in the bond market. Ministers must also turbocharge their plans to strip out planning regulations and other red tape that makes it too hard to invest in Britain’s productive capacity. Bond markets hate bat tunnels, Chancellor.

Because markets are moving, there is some chatter at Westminster about Reeves’s Budget and her future, but the whisperers should bone up on how bond markets actually work – then accept that there was no real alternative to that Budget, and there is no serious alternative to Reeves and the things that she will do next.  

My advice, for what it’s worth: don’t blame the Chancellor for rising gilt yields – and don’t bet against her either. 

Putin is engineering a humanitarian crisis in Transnistria

Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny republic of Moldova has been easy prey for Russia in the past. Its 2.5 million people are among the poorest in Europe and the Kremlin has been able to exploit the country’s dependence on cheap Russian gas to keep it as an ally.

But Moldovans, like Ukrainians, have begun to choose another path. In 2022, they applied to join the European Union to be part of the democratic world, and then elected a pro-western president last year. Vladimir Putin’s response has been to engineer a humanitarian crisis in the region, which is now underway.

The pawns on Putin’s chessboard are the 350,000 mainly Russian-speaking residents of Transnistria – a breakaway Soviet-style state which declared independence from Moldova shortly after the collapse of Communism. 

For three decades, Russia has kept hundreds of troops in Transnistria to support the separatists and keep an eye on Moldova. Russia has also fed the region with free gas supplied via a pipeline that runs through Ukraine. On New Year’s Day, the pipeline, which has helped fund Putin’s war machine by supplying gas to Europe, was closed by Kyiv.

Strategically, the closure of the pipeline was a major blow to the Kremlin. The White House has called it one of Moscow’s ‘most costly defeats’, with Russia now facing losing £6 billion in annual revenue from gas sales to Europe. 

But it has also left its ally Transnistria without energy. Putin could have kept Transnistria warm by sending gas via Turkey and the Trans-Balkan corridor, but that would be more expensive, and Putin has chosen not to do so. 

Putin instead has decided to let the people of Transnistria freeze so he can pin the blame on Moldova’s pro-EU government ahead of the parliamentary elections taking place there this year. So now, the residents of Transnistria are being forced to cut down trees to stay warm and cook their food. The temperature in houses and hospitals has dropped to just 13°C. Factories and schools have shut down, leaving hundreds without a job. Electricity is expected to run out by February. Several people have suffocated in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to heat their homes. 

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Moldova has also been affected by the crisis. Many villages and towns near Transnistria have suffered gas shortages, blackouts and have had to ration hot water. Moldova relies on Transnistria for about two-thirds of its electricity, as the country’s primary power station is located there. For years, this arrangement benefited both sides: Transnistria generated electricity with free Russian gas and sold it to Moldova at low prices. Now they are being forced to import power from Romania, Moldova’s citizens are seeing their electricity bills skyrocket.

Maia Sandu, the recently re-elected president of Moldova, has said that the pipeline closure is a necessary step towards independence. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine is working overtime to tell Moldovans that they voted the wrong way last November. Russia has argued that ‘the decisions of Ukraine and the Moldovan authorities’ have ‘condemned the population of Transnistria to suffering’. 

‘There is an alternative pipeline, the Turkish Stream. So it’s not a problem that gas cannot pass through Ukraine’, Sandu points out. Kyiv, she says, offered to send coal to get the power supply started again.

Sandu is in a delicate position. She almost lost last November’s presidential election to a pro-Kremlin candidate and is facing parliamentary elections this summer. Putin’s strategy now is to cause maximum misery in Moldova in the hope that it will lead to a pro-Moscow majority in parliament, making the pro-EU president powerless. Rising utility bills and the energy crisis are obvious weapons in turning public opinion against Sandu, but they are not the only ones. The longer Transnistria is without gas and electricity, the more its residents – with Moldovan passports and voting rights – will flee to Moldova. Transnistria’s pro-Russian voters could change the composition of the country, turning Moldova towards Moscow for years to come. 

Vadim Krasnoselsky, the leader of Transnistria who works closely with Moscow, has rejected Sandu’s offers of gas and humanitarian aid. He has urged Moldova to pay the £600 million that Gazprom has demanded for what it claims are unpaid debts for the ‘free’ gas piped to Transnistria (Moldova’s government has never recognised this debt as legitimate). 

Pro-Russian politicians in Moldova may well travel to Moscow to crawl in front of Putin, asking him to forgive the alleged debt and supply Russian gas to Transnistria through Turkey. If this leads to Transnistria receiving gas again, it could help them in the parliamentary elections, as they would be able to say they achieved what Sandu couldn’t.

Now is the moment when Ukraine and the EU must step in. Brussels could cover some of the costs of gas and electricity it is exporting to Moldova or help Kyiv send its own gas. Ukraine is ready to help, fearing it could end up encircled by pro-Kremlin counties, making its chances for EU membership even more remote. But Brussels isn’t showing much interest. Last year, the EU lost Georgia to the Kremlin when Moscow helped pro-Russian parties gain a foothold in its parliament. If it doesn’t act soon, it may well lose Moldova as well. 

Meanwhile, Moscow is working on its allies in the EU, encouraging them to point the finger at Zelensky, pressuring him to reopen the pipeline. Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, has accused Zelensky of being a ‘beggar and blackmailer’, costing Slovakia £400 million in transit fees by closing down Russia’s pipeline to Europe. 

Fico has threatened to veto EU military aid for Ukraine and halt crucial electricity supplies to the country after Russian air attacks. He has even threatened to abolish benefits for 130,000 Ukrainian refugees living in Slovakia. Hungary has vowed to block Ukraine’s EU membership if Zelensky does not change his mind about the pipeline.

For Ukraine, the pipeline closure is a rare geopolitical victory, one that Zelensky won’t, and can’t, step back from – at least not until peace talks with Russia begin. Kyiv’s strategy is to offer its own aid to Moldova and help it avoid a political crisis. Ukraine’s best chance of getting fast-track EU membership is to join forces with Moldova, presenting the two countries as a package deal. For now though, the road ahead has never looked more dangerous for both.

Scotland’s safe consumption room won’t solve the drugs crisis

Quarterly reports from the office of National Records of Scotland confirm time and again the existence of an ongoing drug deaths crisis north of the border. And, time and again, the Scottish government reveals itself to be devoid of ideas for how to tackle it. Now, however, there has been a flicker of progress with the opening of the UK’s first safe drug consumption room in Glasgow this week. But will it make any real difference to the national drugs death crisis? I have my doubts.

Scotland has the highest rate of drug-related fatalities anywhere in Europe. And, despite repeated assurances from ministers that they recognise the problem, there is no sign of the situation getting any better. Recently published National Records of Scotland stats shows 1,172 Scots died due to drug misuse in 2023, with drugs deaths occurring in Scotland at almost three times the rate they do in England and Wales.

For a long time, part of the SNP government’s defence of its failure to tackle this national crisis has been that membership of the United Kingdom means ministers are restricted in what they can do. It’s been common to hear campaigners – and SNP MSPs – complain that the refusal of the Home Office to permit the opening of so-called safe consumption rooms, places where addicts can take drugs under supervision, has severely hampered efforts to tackle the shocking overdose death rate. Of course they said that. Independence is, after all, the solution to every problem.

But the creation of the Thistle Centre turns out that big bad Westminster does not represent a serious threat to the establishment of such facilities, after all. Scotland’s Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, recently announced that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute for possession anyone using a safe consumption room and, on Monday, the new Glasgow facility opened its doors to Scotland's drug users. Those who wish to do so are invited to take their heroin or methadone in the presence of what a Scottish government press release says are 'trained health and social care professionals' working 'in a clean, hygienic environment'.

Sure, the safe consumption room may appeal to the well-organised addict who takes time to structure his day. But the likelihood is that it will be ignored by the common-or-garden chaotic user, more usually found on the greasy pavements of Scotland’s largest city. The offer of clean needles for drug users may entice some off the streets, while those making serious attempts to address their addiction may, I suppose, also attend. If there is any immediate benefit from the opening room it will, I think, be to local residents. Any reduction in the number of addicts injecting in tenement closes and discarding needles in play parks will be most welcome to the good people of the Calton district.

But Scotland’s drug death rate is not about clean needles or a lack of consumption rooms. What’s less clear is what it actually is about. Why should Scots drug addicts, more than others in the UK or across continental Europe, turn to debilitating opioids? What is is about Scottish despair that sends the hopeless to heroin?

First Minister John Swinney and Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray visited the Thistle last Friday, in advance of it opening its doors to local addicts. The facility represented a 'significant step forward' in efforts to tackle Scotland’s drug problem, Swinney remarked. Conceding that the Thistle was not a 'silver bullet', the First Minister spoke of the Scottish government’s serious investment in the project, which would be backed to the tune of £2 million a year. That’s certainly a substantial sum for a single facility but it’s pocket change when compared to the many millions cut from the budgets of addiction support services by the SNP during its time in office.

Figures for 2022/23 show drug and alcohol addiction groups had their funding slashed by almost £19 million on the previous year alone. Social work departments and NHS addiction support facilities are stretched to breaking point. Behind the photographs of Swinney and Gray looking earnest at the Thistle centre is the truth that their party has decimated services for addicts while diverting funds to policies aimed at the privileged such as the abolition of university tuition fees and the extension of the provision of free prescriptions to include the wealthy.

Scotland’s drug deaths crisis deepened over years while the SNP ignored it. The idea that giving a few Glaswegian users a room to take drugs marks a 'significant step forward' in addressing the problem is fanciful.

Can Trump claim the credit for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire?

Donald Trump has made a long list of promises for what will be done on ‘day one’ of his second term in the White House. Peace in the Middle East was not one of them. Yet it looks increasingly likely that the President-elect will be sworn in having just helped to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, to (at least temporarily) end the war in Gaza. 

Trump has made his feelings clear about the war for some time: in line with his broader views about foreign conflict, he wanted the war brought to an end. While positioning himself as a strong ally of Israel, the President-elect was also calling for swift action in the lead-up to last year’s election, saying in April: ‘What I said very plainly is get it over with, and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people. And that’s a very simple statement. Get it over with.’

Since his landslide win in November, it seems everyone has been taking his instructions more seriously. A final draft of a ceasefire deal has been circulated by mediators, which is expected to include a return of up to 33 Israeli hostages and a massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Both Joe Biden’s Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff are working together in Doha this morning to see that the deal gets over the line.

Is this Trump’s 1981 moment, when incoming President Ronald Reagan saw 52 Americans being held in the US embassy in Tehran released by Iran the day he was sworn in? There are certain similarities, not least the pressure imposed by both President-elects to have the conflict resolved by the time they enter office. But perhaps the better comparison is the use of the transition period: the two-plus months between election day and the inauguration, when handovers between administrations take place.

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While some doubt the use of this fairly lengthy period, the best-case scenarios can see genuine bipartisan efforts which lead to good outcomes. Although it took the weight of Reagan’s words to get Iran to free the hostages – and the threat of action, which had not been convincing under President Jimmy Carter – it was the negotiations and legal work done by Carter’s administration that also proved vital for getting them home. As Reagan started his first day in the White House, an ousted Carter went to greet the Americans in West Germany, celebrating their release after 444 days in captivity. A similar scene could play out now, as both Biden and Trump’s teams work together to secure more hostage releases (seven American citizens are still being held in the tunnels).

It’s unlikely any celebrations of bipartisan effort will last long. It’s impossible to separate the decision to come to an agreement now and the change in American leadership next week: the calculation being that it is impossible to be sure how President Trump would handle the war. It’s a point Trump will want to make loudly and repeatedly, as such a big part of his third campaign has been a more isolationist-leaning version of ‘peace through strength’. 

The President-elect will be hoping that this foreign-policy victory will boost other parts of his agenda: primarily his pledge to bring Russia’s war to an end, too. The ceasefire also creates an opportunity to get the relationships created through one of Trump’s biggest foreign policy initiatives in his first term – the Abraham Accords – back on track.

Nothing is likely to tie up that neatly. Even if a ceasefire is agreed, it is difficult to see how Israel brings its military operations to an end if not every hostage has been released. And while the Kremlin has signalled ‘political will’ to speak to Trump about the war, there is no indication – as there has been in the Middle East – that this conflict will end simply due to the President-elect’s rival.

Still, if the ceasefire is indeed agreed, it will bolster Trump’s established playbook for negotiating foreign affairs: create an air of uncertainty to make agreeing a deal the better option. It’s a risky model. But it’s one that Americans increasingly think works.

Fact check: The Rest Is Politics’ grooming gang claims

For a little while now there have been questions as to whether the commentary of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart on their podcast The Rest Is Politics is in tune with reality. Ahead of the US election, Stewart – the former Tory politician – claimed with certainty that Kamala Harris would win only to be left with egg on his face when instead Donald Trump romped home. Meanwhile Campbell was slammed by renowned writer and women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling after he appeared to belatedly discover the degree to which gender ideology concerns voters. Now Stewart and Campbell have turned their attention to Britain’s grooming gang scandal – brought back to the top of the news agenda thanks to Elon Musk. Only how helpful or, er, accurate, their comments on the issue are is another matter…

In a recent episode, the dynamic duo frame the re-emergence of reports on the sexual abuse of young women and children by Asian gangs as a PR battle between Sir Keir Starmer and Musk. So, how do their claims stack up?

1. Claim one: The attacks took place in only two cities – Rotherham and Rochdale.
   Fact check: False. As Robert Jenrick noted on Twitter, GB News’s Charlie Peters has pointed out that similar grooming gangs have operated in at least 50 towns and cities across the country. A little research goes a long way…
2. Claim two: Men abusing young girls aged between 13 and 17 were ‘paying them for sex’
   Fact check: False. Most of the victims were not paid. This strange claim by Stewart is certainly one way of glossing over horrific attacks on children.
3. Claim three: The abuse being discussed only took place between 1997 and 2013, with Stewart adding: ‘We’re talking about going back 10, 20 years, is what’s being focused on here.’
   Fact check: False. Victims claim the abuse scandal has not ended and remains ongoing, after many perpetrators and enablers evaded justice and walk free today. 
4. Claim four: On those calling for further scrutiny of the grooming gangs, the pair are more than a little scathing. Campbell turns to calls from Musk, alongside Conservative and Reform politicians, for a national inquiry into the scandal. The former Labour spinner opines to Stewart: ‘What [Kemi] Badenoch and [Robert] Jenrick have done is repeated this call for a national inquiry… They’re jumping on the Elon Musk bandwagon and they’re being driven by the Elon Musk bandwagon… I hope this is just the start in terms of actually beginning to tackle the poison of the far right as it is amplified through what has become a very personal megaphone for a megalomaniac.’ Fact check: False. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has blasted the podcasters for appearing ‘convinced that anyone calling for an inquiry is far-right’ – as it is not simply the viewpoint of ‘the far right’ that Musk is amplifying. More than three-quarters of the public back calls made by Jenrick and Badenoch, amongst others, in favour of a national probe into the grooming gangs – including a growing crowd of Labour politicians.

And speaking of the Labour lot, the pod – co-hosted by Tony Blair’s former comms boss – managed to omit the fact that one of the main reasons the scandal began to dominate news sites in the first place was due to the refusal of Home Office minister Jess Phillips to support calls for a government-led inquiry. Talk about being selective with the facts, eh?

It’s a little embarrassing for the pair who have become increasingly prone to slip-ups of late. Perhaps a rebrand to The Rest is Spin would be more fitting…

The awful calamity of Stalin being a music lover

At around 9 p.m. on 5 March 1953 Sergei Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage on the sofa of his Moscow flat. He was 61, and had struggled for years with ill health. He had long complained of pain in his soul. Less than an hour later, the source of that pain, Joseph Stalin, died of a heart attack in his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow.

Prokofiev’s death wasn’t so much forgotten as ignored. The leading music magazine Sovetskaya muzyka devoted the first 115 pages of its new issue to Stalin; only then did it mention Prokofiev. A million people thronged the streets to see Stalin lie in state; only 15 attended Prokofiev’s funeral. A string quartet played beside Stalin’s bier. Its violinist, Veronika Rostropovich, cried inconsolably. ‘Leave me in peace,’ she told her colleagues. ‘I’m not crying for Stalin but for Prokofiev.’

Stalin’s shadow also looms over The Sound of Utopia, Michel Krielaars’s vivid, thoughtful exploration of the plight of composers, musicians and performers under his rule. Stalin was a music lover. He listened to every new classical recording, writing one of three verdicts on the sleeve: ‘good’, ‘average’ or ‘rubbish’. When the singer Vadim Kozin performed at the Kremlin, Stalin joined him on stage for folk songs. But such favour meant nothing: Kozin was arrested in 1944 for homosexuality and became one of the two million prisoners sent to the Kolyma labour camps in the Russian far east.

Krielaars, a Russophile Dutch journalist, has profiled ten artists to illustrate the challenges they faced in their fight for professional and physical survival. Alongside big names such as Prokofiev we also get Kozin, little known in the West, and Klavdiya Shulzenko, ‘the Russian Vera Lynn’, whose ‘The Blue Scarf’ was the defining patriotic song of the Red Army in the second world war. It was blacklisted in 1946, along with hundreds of other ‘doctrineless’ songs.

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The most surprising subject is Tikhon Khrennikov. Personally appointed by Stalin to lead the Union of Composers in 1948 at the age of 34, and widely regarded, in Dmitri Shostakovich’s phrase, as one of ‘Stalin’s wolfhounds’, Khrennikov haunts these pages. Put simply, he controlled whose music was played. As late as the 1970s he was blacklisting young composers, making it impossible for them even to give small private recitals.

But Krielaars is sympathetic. Khrennikov later said of his promotion: ‘When I came home with the news, my wife and I cried about it all night. I had no choice. You just didn’t defy an order from Stalin.’ He suffered from sleeplessness and hallucinations. Once, when Stalin gave him a dressing down, Khrennikov was so terrified he wet himself. ‘He stuck up for his members as much as he could,’ Krielaars writes, ‘even though he was forced to stab them in the back now and again to maintain credibility.’

There is a story here about hope and resilience. The composer Vsevolod Zaderatsky, who served two sentences in the gulags, wrote music there on a stack of blank telegram forms. ‘My father was cheerful by nature,’ Zaderatsky’s son says. ‘Even in the camp, he couldn’t stop himself.’ Moisei Weinberg was so broken by his time in Moscow’s Butyrka prison that, when he was freed after Stalin’s death, he didn’t dare leave his cell. But he kept writing, albeit for films or for the circus. ‘Remember that all his compositions end in a major key,’ a musician explains. ‘He was an optimist at heart.’

But it is the cold, sour fog of fear that predominates. ‘I was constantly being watched and the secret police would just show up at my door,’ Weinberg said. ‘When they finally did lock me up, it came as a relief.’ And with fear came coercion and self-loathing. ‘I am scared to death,’ Shostakovich said. ‘From childhood I have been doing things that I wanted not to do… I am and always will be a whore.’

The threat was capricious. In February 1948 Prokofiev was honoured in a ceremony at the Kremlin. Days later many of his works were banned. It was also indiscriminate. Zaderatsky was a tsarist White Army officer who fought the Bolsheviks. Alexander Mosolov volunteered for the Red Army after the revolution and wrote an opera extolling enforced collectivisation. Both went to the gulags as counter-revolutionaries.

The Sound of Utopia is engagingly written. Krielaars has interviewed friends and family of his subjects, as well as musicians and academics. Those conversations and Krielaars’s own experiences breathe life into his account. In some ways this is apt: Stalin’s tyranny fed on talk, whether careless words or calculated denunciations. Lives were destroyed by it; but here they are remade.

Krielaars ends with the fear that Putin’s Russia is fast retreating to Soviet-era norms of secrecy, denunciation and terror. He quotes an old Russian proverb: nadezhda umirayet posledney, hope dies last. It’s cold comfort indeed.

The next best thing to visiting a really clever friend in New York

I was on the phone to a friend recently, who asked me what I was reviewing. ‘It’s a book by a lady intellectual,’ I began. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘I hope you don’t put that in your review.’ ‘I’m not that stupid,’ I replied, ‘but it is very important that she’s a woman.’

A self-described radical feminist in the 1960s and 1970s, Vivian Gornick says that that flame has died down a bit now (she was 79 when this book was first published ten years ago). Her perspective in this meandering, delightful memoir-cum-essay is still, obviously, feminine – yet there is a kind of detachment; and from what she says about her past life, and her experiences with men, and with love, there always was, in a way. Hence the ‘odd’ in the title.

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For all the ways in which Gornick is an unconventional human being, this book contains some of the best, most keen-sighted writing on love I have ever read – although, to be strictly accurate, she is writing more about what love isn’t, or how it isn’t what you want it to be. For example:

Sometimes I’d feel puzzled about how I would manage life both as an agent of revolution and as a devotee of love. Inevitably, then, a picture formed itself of me on the stage, my face glowing with purpose, and an adoring man in the audience waiting for me to come down into his arms. That seemed to cover all the bases.

Things didn’t pan out like this, but she can see the drily funny side a half a century on. Sometimes it takes that long.

Here she is about her mother:

I learned early that life was either Chekhovian or Shakespearean. In our house there was no contest. My mother lay on a couch in a half-darkened room, one arm flung across her forehead, the other pressed against her breast. ‘I’m lonely!’ she cried…

What I really want to do is quote large chunks like these, since they are self-explanatory and need no further comment. If I lived with someone, I’d be reading bits out to them until they left the room for some peace and quiet. ‘Listen to this, it’s amazing,’ I’d call to their retreating back.

The book is rich in anecdote, and dialogues with waspish friends, neighbours and people on the street. (Not the subway – you don’t do that in New York.) At one point, Gornick sits down in the queue at a drugstore next to a neighbour – ‘Vera, a Trotskyist from way back, who lives in a fourth-floor walk-up… and whose voice is always pitched at the level of soapbox urgency.’ (You picture her already.) They talk about Vera’s late husband: ‘ “One thing I gotta say,” says Vera, “he was a no-good husband but a great lover.”’ Gornick remarks: ‘I can feel a slight jolt in the body of the man sitting beside me.’ In that slight jolt, and her perception of it, is great comedy, and the book is full of it – of how a keen intelligence and situational awareness can only lead to laughter. Gornick is – as she puts it when talking about the conversations she had with a friend until they started irritating each other – ‘fed by the excitement of abstract thought joined to the concreteness of daily life’.

And that daily life has to be New York, for everything one needs is in it. Her view of the world is as confined as Saul Steinberg’s map of America: anything outside NYC might as well not be. This, in the end, is the most important thing about Gornick: that she’s a New Yorker. She’s so much of one that she barely considers the Bronx, where she grew up, to be part of the city. This is really a love letter to a place that saved her. She says of Samuel Johnson:

He hated and feared village life. The closed, silent streets threw him into despair. In the village his reflected presence was missing. Loneliness became unbearable. The meaning of the city is that it made the loneliness bearable.

That reflected presence means, I think, even the quick glances pedestrians give each other; or the fact that you can look out of the window and see hundreds and hundreds of lighted windows across the street.

Very rarely, the abstract thought becomes a little clotted. ‘New York friendships are an education between devotion to the melancholy and attraction to the expressive.’ That’s a lot of words ending in ‘-tion’ for a short sentence, but is it true, and true only for New York? After reflecting – that word again – I think it is. Read this book. It’s the next best thing to actually going to New York to visit a really clever friend.

Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI

00:00 06:48

Mitchell Reiss has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Is this what it felt like in the months before August 1914? Or during the years leading up to September 1939? The discussion around artificial intelligence produces a deep foreboding that we are in the grip of forces largely beyond our control. Are we sleepwalking towards disaster?

That is the feeling I have after reading Genesis, a collaboration by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, and Henry Kissinger, who died, aged 100, soon after completing this book. They have crafted a holistic analysis of the social, political, psychological and even spiritual impacts that a superior machine intelligence would have for humanity. 

We are broadly familiar with AI’s current and future benefits. These machine tools can process massive amounts of data at unnerving speeds. They can select their own goals, learn from their errors, upgrade their algorithms and design things that no human has ever previously imagined. Some experts predict the machines may soon achieve sentience, demonstrating the elements of human consciousness: memory, imagination and self-awareness. 

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We already see AI’s impact across business and in medicine, especially with cancer screenings, drug development and clinical trials. AI is performing human tasks, such as booking holidays, deciding mortgage eligibility and helping determine criminal justice decisions. Enthusiastic techno-optimists gush that it may even help find solutions for intractable global problems such as climate change, the transition to clean energy, global poverty and conflict between nations. 

While the three authors celebrate these developments, they emphasise that there is no instruction manual telling us how to develop AI safely – one that ensures that it serves humanity and does not subordinate it. Many downsides are already evident. AI will disrupt job markets, causing unemployment especially among less skilled white- collar workers. It is also turbo-charging the spread of disinformation, with more than 70 countries already using this technology to undermine democratic institutions and civic cohesion. 

But, Genesis argues, we are running far larger risks that speak to who we are as a species and what it means to be human. If we are approaching the biological limit of our intelligence and are about to be outpaced by AI, what will it mean to share the planet with more intelligent beings? Would we forfeit control over economic decision making?  Over the exercise of the political process? Over the choice to wage war or negotiate peace? And would AI even give us the options? 

The authors realistically accept that research on AI will not stop, given the outsized financial rewards, ego and power at stake. Speed and secrecy are being privileged over safety. There is no consensus on what constitutes unacceptable risk. Laws and regulations cannot keep up with technological advances. Accidents, errors and unintended consequences in developing and applying the technology seem inevitable. There is currently no way to ensure that AI, especially when married to advances in quantum computing and synthetic biology, will not be developed for malevolent ends such as cyber attacks, automated war or engineered pandemics. Further, the competitive nature of the international system means that states will speed ahead as fast as possible, driven by the fear that second place could mean perpetual servitude. 

Genesis is at its most interesting when it imagines how states might overcome their mutual hostility and suspicion and co-operate to control this new force. One proposal is to create a supranational entity that could license AI production facilities, refine datasets and regulate operations. But even if this organisation could somehow be created, would members automatically receive the benefits of AI if they wanted to use the technology to suppress dissent and deny human rights? How would the organisation ensure compliance and punish violators? 

A second proposal is for the United States and China to collaborate in forging a protocol for jointly managing AI’s perils. The two sides held AI meetings this past year, all unproductive. In November, President Biden and President Xi Jinping agreed that there must always be a human in the nuclear chain of command, meaning that decision-making should not be delegated to an AI machine. 

These efforts fall miles short of what is needed to address the catastrophic risks AI poses; yet it is difficult to envision much more progress in the coming years. The US and China are locked in strategic competition across multiple domains, including AI; indeed, the US is trying to slow China’s development by denying it the most advanced AI chips. And even if a bilateral condominium could miraculously be achieved, would other states agree to accept a subordinate position in perpetuity? 

The authors see humanity being at a ‘hinge point of history’, hence the title Genesis, but they don’t seem optimistic. They warn that we have a decade ‘at most’ to get things right and concede that creating a balance and equilibrium among competing states would require ‘a Herculean effort’. 

An abiding focus of Kissinger’s life’s work was the intersection between technology and public policy, starting with his writings in the 1950s on nuclear weapons. He knew that technology alone could not overcome mistrust among states, curb human ambition or eliminate bad actors. Yet, through a combination of thoughtful action and luck, a nuclear holocaust was averted.  Kissinger devoted the final years of his life to bringing China and America together to negotiate a pathway forward on AI. His last book stands as both an impassioned warning and an urgent challenge.

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The golden days of Greenwich Village

This multitudinous chronicle is not the story of the folk music revival. Rather, it’s not only the story of the folk scene in Greenwich Village from the late 1950s through the early 1980s. Ambitiously, sometimes overwhelmingly, but always fascinatingly, David Browne – a senior editor at Rolling Stone – composes his book of interconnected stories stemming from jazz, blues, folk, folk-rock and all the complementing, competing musical genres that could define what’s been played in the basement nightclubs and coffee houses in this small area of New York City since the early 20th century.

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He takes his title from the talkin’ blues, the direct ancestor of rap, and he is, like the writers of those blues, a born storyteller. Gliding from the founding of the Village itself (Greenwich means ‘green village’, so the Village is redundant), through the opening of Max Gordon’s Village Vanguard in February 1935, up to the somewhat idiosyncratic choice of Suzanne Vega on Cornelia Street in the mid-1980s, Browne leaves out very little. He memorialises the venues themselves like a Victorian writer turning a debtors’ prison or house on the high moors into a character, brings into focus musicians only slightly regarded or near-forgotten who deserve every bit of credit he gives them, and celebrates both the living and the dead.

There must be some organising figure for a book this detailed and vast, and, rightly, it is Dave Van Ronk. The Brooklyn-born Van Ronk was a singer, multi-instrumentalist, music historian and scholar, and he knew it all: Robert Johnson’s blues, Scott Joplin’s ragtime, jazz, gospel, ancient ballads, sea shanties, and what had just been written in a cellar or garret by a friend that very week. Toweringly tall, black-haired and bearded, he both generated and dominated the Village’s burgeoning folk scene from the appearance of his first Folkways album, Dave Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues and a Spiritual (1959), when he was 23. Browne ends his book with Van Ronk’s death in 2002 – by which time both folk music and Greenwich Village were already changed utterly.

The Village was so full of activity and vitality, and there are so many names and performances to remember and to celebrate, that the cheek-by-jowliness staggers. Clubs were subterranean crucibles where jazz, folk, blues, crooning, instrumentals, poetry readings and other spoken-word raps swirled in a potent brew of possibilities. Some of the old places are long gone, some have moved to other locations, and some still have live music most nights. Their very names are incantations: Kettle of Fish, Café Figaro, Gerdes (or Gerde’s) Folk City, Bon Soir, the Bitter End, Fat Black Pussycat, the Gaslight, Café Bizarre.

Izzy Young, thank heavens, didn’t take over his family’s bakery in the Bronx, or remain a pre-med student and spend his life as a Brooklyn doctor. Instead, he founded the Folklore Center on MacDougal Street in 1957 and arranged for Bob Dylan to perform uptown at Carnegie Hall (in the Chapter Hall) in 1961. But another early champion of Dylan’s, Pete Seeger, is eerily absent. Without Seeger, there would have been no Greenwich Village folk revival. As a child in the 1960s, I knew Seeger’s voice as well as I knew that of family members, and could sing along with everything from bloody ballads to workers’ anthems. That he lived to be 94, and performed live to sold-out audiences until two months before his death in 2014, does not fit the rise-and-fall theme of Talkin’ Greenwich Village, but it is true, and matters. Happy Traum once told me that without having heard Seeger at the Brooklyn Academy of Music when he was a teenager, he might not have become a folk singer. He’d have stuck with the blues he was already learning from Brownie McGee.

Similarly missing in the action is Paul Clayton, folk superstar, who was, as Dylan recalled of his friend in Chronicles, Vol. 1 (2004), ‘unique – elegiac, very princely – part Yankee gentleman and part Southern rakish dandy. He dressed in black from head to foot and would quote Shakespeare’. Clayton travelled the hills and hollers of the Blue Ridge Mountains singing songs he knew would induce ancient performers to share with him their versions of ballads and original compositions. He recorded hundreds of them for Folkways, but gets just two mentions in this book.

However, Browne’s showcasing of Danny Kalb and the Roches and his superb biographical sketches of many lesser known musicians are commendable. Stepping from these pages, for example, are Sheila Jordan and her friend Herbert Khaury, ‘a stringy-haired, one-man freak show from the Bronx, who played a ukulele, sang in an eerie quaver and had a deep reservoir of knowledge of pre-rock-and-roll history and songs’. Khaury was a performer who first called himself Larry Love, before settling on the alias of Tiny Tim. Richie Havens, Odetta, Len Chandler and other black musicians who experienced both the relative colour-blindness of other Village folksingers and the prejudice of the outside world, the police and locals living near Washington Square, are given credit for both their musicianship and their importance to the civil rights movement.

The ‘beatnik riot’ of 9 April 1961, when the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation rejected musicians’ application for a renewal of the then-required permit to play music in Washington Square, unfolds like a movie. Izzy Young conducted the folkies in ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, but they were rounded up and arrested anyway. The newly arrived Dylan wrote an unpublished, full-on protest song about the riot.

Peter Stampfel (of the joyously named Holy Modal Rounders) recalls his first sight of Dylan in the Village, wearing motorcycle boots and carrying his guitar. ‘I thought, “He’s from New Jersey,” because you only carry your guitar case to get laid.’ Then he heard Dylan sing: ‘His phrasing was rock and roll. I realised a merger [of folk and rock] was absolutely on the table.’ Soon Dylan was being managed by Albert Grossman, a Chicago-born economist who had co-founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. When Dylan ‘went electric’ at that festival in 1965, rock showed its swift, hard upper hand. Fare thee well, folk.

It’s a stretch to conclude Talkin’ Greenwich Village in 2002, perhaps, but the reach of folk music and what Greenwich Village means in popular culture is long indeed. Together with Terri Thal’s memoir My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me (2023), Talkin’ Greenwich Village provides a vivid picture of the folk times of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the long shadows that trail into subsequent decades across the wickerwork of streets and alleys near Washington Square. Feel the power of those singalong-in-the-sun days and smoky club nights every time you pick up a Folkways album – or when you listen to records of ‘folklore’ from Nelly Furtado, Taylor Swift and a legion of musicians unborn in those times but steeped in the old stories.

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The horror of Hungary in the second world war

I suspect Adam LeBor and his publishers must have struggled to come up with the title The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940-1945. The book certainly does what it says on the cover, but its pages contain other Magyar-themed subjects. We are offered a wide-ranging reflection on Hungary in the first half of the 20th century, from the harsh measures of the 1920 Trianon treaty to the devastating arrival of the Soviet army in Budapest in 1944.

LeBor switches between an Olympian view of European geopolitics, trawling diplomatic archives and political memoirs and focusing on individuals – Hungarian aristocrats, Zionists and nightclub singers – to show how history felt on the ground. He is particularly concerned with the fate of Hungarian Jewry.

The central figure in this period of Hungarian history is Admiral Miklos Horthy, the regent. Those who know little about Hungarian history tend to lump him in with the fascist dictators of the era; but Horthy wasn’t a fascist (he banned the Nazis) and he wasn’t a dictator. He was a figure who seemed to have wandered out of an operetta, an admiral without a navy, a regent without a king, who exercised undemocratic power but who presided over a parliamentary democracy.

LeBor, a longtime Budapest resident, is too knowledgeable to make that mistake; and there’s no doubt that the report card standard ‘could have done better’ applies to Horthy, like most leaders. But even historians who give Horthy a break on the fascism front tend to focus on the poverty and racism of Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s (as if those phenomena were unknown in the US, Britain or elsewhere in Europe at the time). Hungary’s anti-Jewish law of 1920, the Numerus Clausus, which limited the intake of Jewish university students is often cited, although this percentage-of-the-population representation is exactly the sort of policy that current DEI zealots are espousing.

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Horthy was a reactionary, who thought the British Empire was rather well run, and an anti-Semite in that he wouldn’t have liked his children to marry anyone Jewish (although it should be remembered that there were Jewish families who wouldn’t have wanted their children to marry Horthys) but who had Jewish friends. He was also, in the best sense of the term, an officer and a gentleman.

His coming to power, after Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic, was followed by the White Terror, in which many Jews, who often had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks, were tortured and killed by Horthy’s supporters, despite his efforts to rein them in. The White Terror’s body count was indeed higher than Bela Kun’s – but then Kun only had 133 days to get liquidating.

Keeping the pro-Nazi nutters in check was one of Horthy’s main concerns, but he had limited success. The prime minister Gyula Gombos, who coined the term ‘Axis’ powers, died in 1936; but there were many others in ministries and the army who felt that Hitler, or at least Germany, was the way to go.

Hungary was in a difficult position when the second world war broke out. Traditionally friendly with Poland, Hungarians helped fleeing Poles, despite German outrage. Later, Allied POWs enjoyed unusual freedom, some French prisoners even working as waiters. LeBor skilfully depicts the war years in Budapest when politicians, diplomats and spies were all playing a role, bluffing. The Germans knew what the Hungarians were doing, and the Hungarians knew they knew. (Spies seem to love spying on other spies more than anything else.)

The war years also exemplified the human fondness for wishful thinking. Horthy hoped he could somehow extricate his country from the conflict, or at least curtail German excesses. The Germans hoped they could get the Hungarians to do their bidding without a messy invasion. The Jews hoped things wouldn’t get worse. Everyone ended up bitterly disappointed – even Adolf Eichmann. Some of the SOE operations that LeBor has investigated would make a good comedy; others not. Overall, they scored nul points in Hungary because they too succumbed to wishful thinking.

The final chapters dealing with the Holocaust, the trains to Auschwitz, the Arrow Cross massacres – when Jews were shot on the banks of the Danube by teenage fascists – and the wholesale carnage of the siege of Budapest as Germans, Hungarians and Soviets battled it out, are inevitably chilling. It was total anarchy, total brutality: murder, rape and starvation. You didn’t want to be there. The story of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews, is well covered; but Wallenberg had some protection as a diplomat, although that status didn’t save him in the end. More amazing was how ordinary Hungarians risked their lives by hiding Jews in their pantries and cellars.

If you have the stomach to read yet more about the war years, Bela Zsolt’s memoir on the Hungarian Holocaust, Nine Suitcases, is the bleakest book I’ve ever read and really should come with a health warning. On the fiction side, there is Sandor Marai’s Liberation, by far his darkest work, soon to be available in English. Written just after the war, it was only published in Hungary in 2000, long after the author’s death, presumably because no one wanted to be reminded about 1944.

A mole in the CIA: The Seventh Floor, by David McCloskey, reviewed

David McCloskey, whose Damascus Station was a brilliant debut, has followed it in quick succession with a Russian-based story, Moscow X, and now The Seventh Floor. The pace of all three books is matched by the speed with which they have been produced; and for all The Seventh Floor’s strengths,the haste is beginning to show.

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Like the earlier two thrillers, it starts with a bang – or rather a crunch, when a Russian spy, called home peremptorily from Greece by his superiors, bites into a disguised cyanide capsule before the State security apparatus can question him. Almost simultaneously, another Russian spook, named Golikov, has a clandestine meeting in Singapore with Sam Joseph, a CIA officer known to us from Moscow X. Golikov tersely warns the American that there is a mole working at the highest level of the Agency; but he is then promptly murdered and Joseph is abducted by the Russians. Despite grotesque, prolonged bouts of interrogation, Joseph manages to persuade the Russians he has been told nothing of importance by Golikov, and is eventually released as part of a spy swap.

Enter Artemis Procter, the aggressive, entirely fearless CIA operative who also figures in the earlier books. Out of the blue, she finds herself cashiered for the failure of an earlier mission; a senior colleague, convinced the Agency has been penetrated, is also axed. But when Procter learns of Golikov’s warning from Joseph, she sets off on an unauthorised hunt for the mole, and soon has a list of four suspects, all with Russian experience and known informally by their peers as the Russia Mafia.

What follows is well written and tautly paced, with many touches that show off McCloskey’s much-vaunted insider knowledge. New characters emerge, including a couple of Russian illegals operating as assassins in the United States, and this nicely leavens the unrelenting hunt for the mole that Procter conducts. The complicated story is deftly handled, though McCloskey might note that Charles McCarry’s The Tears of Autumn, one of the few espionage novels that can be called a masterpiece, has an essentially simple plot.

McCloskey is at pains to acknowledge a debt to John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but certain similarities are so marked that homage tips perilously close to pastiche. As in Tinker Tailor, there is a shortlist of suspects, each of whom are visited and questioned in turn by the investigating Procter; and as in the earlier novel, at Procter’s behest, a co-operating colleague (Joseph), who still has access to headquarters, combs through historical files he has no authorisation to consult.

Sadly, what McCloskey doesn’t take from Le Carré is a flair for brief, brilliantly distinctive characterisation. Metonymy is a minefield for most novelists, but it was mastered by Le Carré, who could create vivid personalities without actually providing very much information. What do we know about George Smiley’s parents or his upbringing? Nothing. Nonetheless, we feel we know Smiley intimately from a few telling details: his tic-like polishing of his spectacles with his necktie, for example, perfectly captures the man’s mix of fastidiousness and mild abstraction.

The Seventh Floor never matches this expert handling of characters, and the suspects themselves are flat and unmemorable, for the most part submerged by the accelerating actions of the plot. The eventual unmasking of the mole (again in a scene reminiscent of Tinker Tailor’s denouement) is anticlimactic, since we don’t have a deep enough connection with the suspects to be surprised.

In three novels and just three years, McCloskey has already reached a high rung on the publishing ladder of spy fiction. A writer of his manifest talent would do well to stop climbing for a time, or at least do so more slowly.

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