Inside the handover of Hong Kong

During the negotiations between the UK Foreign Office and the Chinese government that led to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, I was engaged in the fruitless search for oil in the South China and Yellow Seas, in partnership with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC (“Snook”). These arrangements were the first to be concluded with western companies since the Cultural Revolution. They were conducted with a chilly civility in Beijing — then still a spartan city to say the least, with only two hotels available to western visitors.

We were installed in the north of the city in a hotel designed allegedly by I.M. Pei, about an hour’s drive from the CNOOC offices. The day always concluded with a “banquet,” an oxymoron if ever there was one, where we chewed our way through heaven knows what washed down with some evil rice wine, or Tsingtao beer if we were lucky. The events commenced at 6 p.m. and terminated on the dot of eight, when we were liberated to return to the fragrant hills. I had brought a box of cigars and a ration of novels by P.G. Wodehouse, so I was impervious to the loneliness of those long nights. Our party included Geoffrey Stockwell, previously the chairman of the Iraq Petroleum Company, and a benign fellow traveler, Alan Johnson, our chief geologist. Witty and long-suffering, he could extract humor from almost anything. Also with us was a veteran Palestinian geologist, Sami Nasr, a resident of Australia, who had married a very Irish matron at the Kirkuk Oilfield Hospital. Sami, at our first breakfast, insisted on ordering a six-minute boiled egg. Inevitably, six solid eggs eventually found their way to his plate.

We had raised some money for the project in Hong Kong through a special purpose vehicle, as a result of which the Hong Kong Bank (now HSBC) owned 30 percent of Cluff Oil. I had been surprised at the warmth of our welcome in Beijing and the general consideration given to our welfare, the reason for which was revealed at our first meeting with CNOOC where an enormous blackboard displayed our corporate structure in chalk. This revealed CNOOC’s misunderstanding, not that the Hong Kong Bank owned 30 percent of Cluff Oil, but rather that Cluff Oil owned 30 percent of the Hong Kong Bank! I did not disabuse them of this error. And I recall that Michael Sandberg, the genial chairman of the bank at the time, was much amused when I relayed to him the involuntary subterfuge which largely led to us securing the licenses in the South China and Yellow Seas.

We made frequent trips via Hong Kong to Beijing and to Shanghai, where we eventually opened an office, and we became very fond of our CNOOC opposite numbers. I once had a memorable night in the Sassoon Villa in Shanghai. I lay awake as I could hear the railway engines shunting and hooting in the distant marshalling yards, somehow an eerie sound resonant of pre-war China. During the night it was so cold that the water in the glass by my bed froze solid. Eventually I struggled out of bed to shave in the porcelain washbasin, made in Staffordshire in the 1920s, which suddenly, shrinking from the cold perhaps, detached itself from the wall and crashed to the ground.

During these expeditions to and from Beijing and Shanghai over a number of years, the scene was set for the negotiations which Mrs. Thatcher ordained should end the looming uncertainty regarding the lease on the new territories. Since the lease was about to expire, it was impossible for the banking system to grant new mortgages. It was largely under pressure from the banks that Lord MacLehose, the then-governor of Hong Kong, had raised the issue with the President of China on a routine visit. Their discussion precipitated the talks which led to the 1997 handover. Spending as much time in Hong Kong as I did — indeed I got married there in 1993 — I came inevitably to discuss the “handover” issue with highly intelligent Hong Kong Chinese professional and commercial friends. That they had not been consulted about any aspect of their future clearly rankled, and rightly so, since their destiny was about to be determined without any input from them. No doubt Mrs. Thatcher wanted a problem solved and instructed the Foreign Office to get on with it. Again and again I was advised by my Chinese friends that no treaty would be worth the paper it was written on. And how right they were!

Was there an alternative? At the time, China was chronically short of foreign exchange. My friends were all of the view that an extension of the lease for fifty years at a significant cost to Hong Kong would have been welcome to China, provided it was dressed up as being “the Chinese idea.” The two flags of the People’s Republic and the United Kingdom could have flown side by side, and harmony continued, instead of the ill-tempered handover followed by successive abrogations of the terms of the “one country, two systems” arrangement. To me, it seems nothing less than incredible that we were so discourteous, and so stupid, as not to consult the people of Hong Kong about their future.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Reform’s radical manifesto would do wonders for democracy

In this election, neither Labour nor the Tories are particularly interested in serious constitutional reform. By contrast, there’s one smaller opposition party that makes it quite clear in its manifesto that it does believe in serious democratic change to make government radically responsive to what voters want. That party is Reform.

True, there’s a lot in its manifesto, launched today, to make you cautious: its elements of rehashed free-market Thatcherism, for instance, not to mention its fairly sketchy funding projections. But a number of its constitutional proposals make for interesting reading. Some ideas are predictable, such as replacing the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) with a British Bill of Rights, or changing the voting system to prevent abuse of postal votes. But some of the others are much more significant.

One concerns the House of Lords. The line is blunt: the House must be made much smaller, and political appointments to it must stop. While details are sketchy, Reform is on to something here. An unintended consequence of the introduction of life peerages in 1958 and Tony Blair’s all-but-exclusion of hereditary peers has been the foundation of a lethargic club of political has-beens, quangocrats and worthies seen by a comfortable establishment as unlikely to rock the boat. As an organisation, it has seen its function largely as obstructing anything contrary to a broad progressive consensus, for example in matters such as Brexit and immigration. Its replacement with (presumably) an elected body of some sort, while unwelcome to major parties in need of a source of rewards and consolation prizes, can only improve matters.

Secondly, on one matter Reform are, perhaps surprisingly, at one with the Lib Dems. They now support proportional representation for MPs. Admittedly there is self-interest here: both are small parties in a two-party system and suffer a severe squeeze in representation as a result. But the embrace of PR is important. 

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This policy won’t attract lifelong Tories who see attacks on the two-party system as a recipe for weak government, or Labourites joyfully eyeing the prospect of using that system to lock in a super-majority. But it may enliven the increasing number who object to the effective disenfranchisement of substantial bodies of opinion and see this as a potential threat to effective democracy.

In any case, the two-party system, at least in its form of two broad-church groupings each with a reliable natural following and a relatively small number of floating voters in the middle up for grabs, is beginning to look moribund. Put bluntly, any Labour landslide in July will be powered not by Labour fans but by those who want a change in government and see a Labour vote, possibly holding their nose, as the only way to get it. In the light of this, any change in the voting system that gives such people some way of effectively voting for what they want, instead of against what they don’t like, can only be a plus.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is a proposal for the Civil Service. Reform advocates the possibility of political appointees at the very top. To many an entirely unacceptable Americanism, this idea is actually worth a closer look. Apart from the fact that we already have elements of it, in the shape of Spads entitled within limits to give orders to civil servants, the uncomfortable truth is that the fabled impartiality of the British civil service has subtly morphed into something rather less attractive. 

Today, senior mandarins not infrequently see their constitutional independence not so much as obliging them to help ministers carry out voters’ wishes, as licensing them to act as an independent power in their own right. They are not averse to obstructing a minister if called on to carry out a policy seen as contrary to some overarching principle such as international human rights or the rule of law. Nor do they have much compunction about discreetly informing a minister that if they appoint to (say) a statutory body someone a civil service appointments panel regards as unappointable, this is probably unlawful and risks a judicial review. In so far as allowing senior appointments by an elected minister can prevent such obstructionist tactics, there is a good deal to be said for it.

It is fair to say that the Reform manifesto overall is a fairly amateurish document: this is perhaps unsurprising for a party that only became a serious contender in the election two or three weeks ago, and clearly had to assemble it in a hurry. Nevertheless, the fairly raw democracy which it promotes has a great deal going for it.

Reform’s critics would do well to watch carefully their instinct to preface the name of the party with the words ‘right-wing’ or ‘far right’. To say this of a party that stands for measures to make Parliament more reflective of voters’ views, to turn the House of Lords into a credible second chamber, and blow a hole in the ability of an obstructionist civil service to stymie measures that go against their own world view is plain wrong. Like it or not, Reform’s manifesto is a radical and it would be a mistake to write-off all of its suggestions

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Adopting the Great Loop mindset

When I asked Malinda and Keith Martin when a good time for an interview would be, Malinda wrote back, “We are having drinks on the back deck, so now would be fine.” I was having drinks on my front porch, and I knew already the conversation would be more than fine.

The Martins are from Huntsville, Alabama, and started down the Tennessee River in their 1987 forty-three-foot Hatteras motor yacht — the Sea Cottage — last December on their quest to become “Loopers.” In late May, when we spoke, they were anchored in North Carolina.

A person earns the title of “Looper” when he completes the Great Loop, which America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association (AGLCA) explains is “a circumnavigation of the eastern US and part of Canada. The route includes the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the New York State canals, the Canadian canals, the Great Lakes, the inland rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.”

First things first: what is a Looper’s drink of choice?

“Well, that’s a wide variety of things,” muses Malinda in a charming southern drawl. “It could be beer, French 75, a margarita…”

“Bourbon cocktail!” chimes in Keith.

“Oh yeah, brown water!” rejoins Malinda with a laugh. “The nice thing about ‘docktails’ when you have other people come, everybody brings their own drinks.”

The Martins are both in their sixties and agreed that after they both retired, they wanted to conquer the Great Loop. When Keith was diagnosed with cancer last summer, “We told the doctor, ‘We are doing this trip come hell or high water this December 1; we don’t have time to be sick,’” Malinda recalls. “They worked with us, and Keith had surgery. He’s cancer free, and come December 1, we took off!”

Every day on the boat is “an uncomfortable pleasure,” the couple says, with “a new challenge mentally, physically, whatever, that you have to overcome. And it’s really great.”

According to Keith, the trip is “the perfect pay-it-forward lifestyle. Everybody wants to see everybody else succeed and everybody grabs the ropes and helps. We say [the other Loopers] are friends you just haven’t met yet.”

No two days of the Loop are the same. Says Malinda, “We travel some days and other days either anchor out and go fishing, paddleboarding, snorkeling, diving, swimming, beachcombing, crabbing, watch the wildlife, read, paint or draw and visit with other boaters. If we go to a marina, there is provisioning, tinkering with boat issues, visiting the towns, eating out, and of course docktails. The people are the best part.”

Keith describes the Looping lifestyle as “rekindling Mayberry attitudes,” and, he says, “especially with the political agendas that are going on today, it’s such a breath of fresh air.”

Political topics rarely come up, Keith adds, because “there’s so much other stuff to talk about that it doesn’t drive the conversation out here. And people smile so much more — and laugh!”

Kimberly Russo is AGLCA’s director and echoes the Martins’ experience. Looping, she says, “restores your faith in humanity.” The trip is “the great equalizer,” because “nobody really cares if you’re on a fifty-foot, brand-new boat or on a small sailboat from the Eighties. They care about where you’re going next or where you’ve been.”

Plus, “it’s a lot easier to unplug” when you’re out on the water, Russo says. You’re busy, generally not spending a lot of time in front of a computer or phone screen. For another, you’re absorbed in your new destination. “Arriving by boat, it’s just a completely different outlook than when you arrive by car or plane,” Russo says.

To prepare would-be Loopers for their journeys, AGLCA puts on semi-annual “Rendezvous” with seminars on how to plan and prepare, what to know about weather, anchoring, etc. There’s also a lot of social time at these events, too, which is something Billy Kahn, of Phoenix, Arizona, is looking forward to when he departs on the Great Loop with his wife a year from now. He notes how “water has a calming influence on people,” and it’s “that kind of energy, that community, rather than some of the news stuff we see every day” that he’s excited to experience.

Methinks it would do us all good to take part in the Great Loop lifestyle, or at least adopt the mindset. And it’s getting easier to do so. About 200 people (up from an average of 150) are becoming Loopers each year. Russo says Starlink internet has been “a gamechanger” for remote workers, and navigation technology has made Looping much easier. While the Great Loop is still largely composed of retirees, there are now more homeschooling families and younger couples on the waterways.

Russo says social media has also helped people realize Looping “can be done on a reasonable budget… Loopers are not all rich people on fifty-foot boats that cost a million dollars. Other than the boat and fuel cost, most of your other expenses are not that different from home.”

Keith sums up the Great Loop with the George Strait hit that declares “There’s a difference in living and living well.” The Martins assure me they’re living well, and I can hear it in their voices.

In the same song, Strait also sings, “Something’s always missing ‘til you share it with someone else.” The Martins say the Great Loop has strengthened their marriage, and as for Kahn’s observation about water’s soothing qualities, the Martins know a man who called up the ex-wife he’d been divorced from for fifteen years, convinced her to Loop with him and three years later, they bought a house together in the Bahamas.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Meet Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s anti-Trudeau

An extreme form of mental gymnastics is required to believe that a pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, pro-immigration philosemite in an interracial marriage is also Canada’s beachhead for an invasion of American-style white nationalism.

Then again, Canadians have extremely flexible imaginations.

There are armies of politically literate Canadians who earnestly think that Pierre Poilievre would be comfortable among the members of the Republican Party — even in the Freedom Caucus that comprises its rightmost flank. Not a few of them — grown adults who can tie their own shoes and read without moving their mouths — genuinely believe that Poilievre is something other than a mild-mannered, ideologically malleable, Ottawa-tempered functionary.

Poilievre, a forty-five-year-old Conservative who has been involved in politics since he was a teenager, is an odd figure to have set the cat among the pigeons so completely. But the delusion isn’t the pigeons’ fault, really. Most Canadians are brought up in a culture that is so thoroughly conducive to cognitive dissonance that even the most basic observations about their own governance can prove impossibly elusive.

In Canada, national identity is (and has long been) predicated on the blinding myth of moral exceptionalism — particularly in relation to the United States.

Canadian schoolchildren are taught that theirs is a restrained, peacekeeping nation rather than one that wages avaricious wars of conquest. They are taught that Canada is a tolerant cultural mosaic rather than an oppressive, xenophobic melting pot. They are taught that the relative peace and stillness on their border is born of generosity rather than geographic circumstance. They are taught that access to third-trimester abortion, drug legalization and euthanasia reveals the enlightenment of their polity rather than the ossification of their institutions and the lethargy of their political discourse. These and other intractable myths are clung to, desperately, by a people that lacks any sort of deeper, binding identity.

Unsurprisingly, subscription to these myths arrives accompanied by an instinctive disgust toward the unabashed American nationalism south of the border, the red-blooded Trumpism that eschews rather than embraces Canada’s so-called cultural hallmarks. This disgust, unfortunately for Justin Trudeau’s political adversaries, attaches itself to anyone who presents even a modicum of resistance to Canada’s fervid liberal consensus. And it is fervid.

A January poll conducted by the Canadian non-profit Angus Reid Institute indicated that nearly two-thirds of Canadians believe the United States cannot survive another Trump presidency. Donald Trump, his political movement and everything it is imagined to foreshadow appear to misalign fundamentally with Canada’s totalizing cultural mythology.

The time-honored strategy of accusing a Conservative Party leader of sharing unacceptable American positions has become one of the most rewarding messaging strategies in the current Canadian political arena, even if it requires Olympic levels of rhetorical elasticity. For several years attempts to compare Poilievre’s position with something that it manifestly isn’t have been the most effective means of safeguarding the Trudeau government’s decade-long chokehold on power, and in a period that coincides with Trump’s 2024 campaign, the effort is switching into overdrive.

“Conflating Canadian Conservatives with the worst of the American GOP excesses is a standard play for the Liberal Party of Canada,” says Jeff Ballingall, president of Mobilize Media Group and veteran conservative politico. “As they’re twenty points down, the Trudeau Liberals cannot talk about their own record, and we should suspect they’ll reach new depths of desperation in an attempt to stave off electoral annihilation.”

The conflation tactic was hard at work this May, when the prime minister criticized the New Brunswick government for its imagined prohibition of public funding for abortions. “I will continue to call out the government of New Brunswick and any Conservative leader across the country who continues to go after women’s rights,” Trudeau told reporters. “Indeed, we’re seeing what happened in the United States, with the reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

He offered similar remarks to the Canadian Press earlier this year: “What we’re seeing from these MAGA conservatives is an approach on going back on fundamental rights in ways we shouldn’t be seeing.” His reference was to US politics, but, he added, “the threat” to Canada “is real.” As the National Post’s Chris Selley noted at the time, “Even by the standards of Trudeauvian hyperbole and Canada’s kabuki abortion politics, that would be a hall-of-fame howler.”

Hall-of-fame, without a doubt. The specific instance that Trudeau was referring to so dramatically was New Brunswick’s move from clinic-based to hospital-based abortions. Abortion itself, which was sanctioned during Trudeau père’s tenure in the 1960s, has no legal restrictions in the country. There is not currently — nor has there been for over three decades — a politically viable pro-life movement in Canada.

And yet, the messaging lands. In the minds of a staggering share of Canadian voters, it’s totally conceivable that a minor bureaucratic rearrangement is the first step down the path toward a Handmaid’s Tale hellscape.

What this histrionic mindset means in practice for Canadian Conservatives is that they must decisively differentiate themselves from their American counterparts. In particular, it means shunning American media. It means forgoing the opportunity to lean on ideologically supportive outlets simply because they are headquartered south of the 49th parallel. It means losing out on access to some of the largest media entities in the world — consumed by millions of Canadians — lest there be any appearance of collaboration or political alignment.

Unlike Justin Trudeau, who cheerfully sat for interviews with the New York Times during his rise to power, Pierre Poilievre is unable to indulge the countless American journalists who would boost his signal. It’s a bizarre, obstinate reality of Canada’s political culture, but it’s a reality nevertheless.

Poilievre knows the rules of this game as well as anyone.

Last October, he had one of the biggest media moments of his career, the famous “apple incident,” when during an outdoor, scrum-style interview in British Columbia, Poilievre coolly munched on an apple while a reporter questioned him about his supposed “populist pathway” and compared him to Donald Trump. In the video, which garnered millions of views in Canada and abroad, Poilievre swiftly deflected ideological questions, maintaining a calm and composed demeanor as the man with the microphone forgot how to speak. The moment appeared spontaneous and unscripted, contrasting starkly with most political interactions in Canada. Poilievre’s responses emphasized common-sense solutions and criticized the current government’s economic policies. He successfully framed himself as a straight-talking and pragmatic alternative to a scandal-plagued, out-of-touch, nepo-baby prime minister whose approval rating has plummeted to an all-time low: an anemic 28 percent at the end of April.

Conservatives around the Western world celebrated the confrontation as a masterclass in handling the sort of snarky reporters Canada has become so famous for producing. It was a verbal beatdown, and it was brutal, and Poilievre made it look effortless. In the days that followed the incident, he could have gone on Tucker Carlson’s show. He could have gone on Ben Shapiro’s podcast. He could have gone on any number of America’s conservative cable networks. All these media opportunities would have given him a chance to spread his message to millions of viewers — many American, admittedly, but many Canadian as well.

But if the apple incident earned the media attention, he wasn’t allowed to cash in on it. The fear of being associated with the American political ecosystem is incredibly strong. It’s so strong that dismissing this profile as needlessly risky was something of a foregone conclusion — despite the fact that The Spectator is not especially partisan, or particularly American; despite the fact that it is one of the oldest, most reputable publications in the English-speaking world; and despite the fact that the piece would be penned by a Canadian national.

The political calculus is, in the mind of Poilievre and his comms team, clear: given the psychosis that grips Canada’s collective cultural consciousness, it’s simply too risky. There are far too many non-aligned Canadian voters who could be swung away from voting Conservative if the Liberals land even the most remotely believable accusations of similarity with America’s right-wing.

And so Poilievre has been forced to be disciplined in his isolation. He’s been forced to stay on-message, in-country, hermetically sealed off from the rest of the continent, narrowly in his lane.

So far that approach has served him well enough. On paper, things look good. According to late May polling data, the Tories would secure a commanding victory if an election were held today, with projections indicating they would win 217 seats (of 343) compared to a mere sixty-four for the incumbent Liberal Party.

“The challenge for the Liberals now in Canada is that because they’ve been so consistently low in the polls, efforts to tie the Conservatives to the [American] Republicans without any strong evidence fall on deaf ears and wind up backfiring, instead playing into the desperation narrative around the Liberals’ inability to get traction with Canadians,” says Ginny Roth, partner at Crestview Strategy and one of Canada’s most authoritative political voices.

Presently, Trudeau’s Liberals control a minority government that is reliant on the support of the New Democratic Party to pass legislation and maintain parliamentary stability. This coalition has been critical in sustaining the Liberals, but its political frailty is growing apparent as issues like cost of living and the situation in Gaza see young voters flee from the party in droves.

The next federal election is scheduled to take place on or before October 20, 2025, contingent upon Trudeau’s ability to keep the alliance with the NDP intact that long. Should this coalition falter, an earlier election could be triggered.

It is likely that Poilievre would be less isolated from the outside world were he to be elected to Canada’s top office. Especially in a majority-government situation with padded margins, he and his inner cadre might feel more comfortable speaking to their neighbors.

“Leadership candidates have different media strategies than leaders of the opposition, who have different media strategies than prime ministers,” remarks Anthony Koch, a strategist who served as Poilievre’s spokesman during the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election. “Canadian politicians seeking to be elected to Canadian political office in opposition generally speak to media that has a Canadian audience.”

“As prime minister, he and his government would be more likely than now to occasionally want to reach audiences in other countries,” Roth adds. “So, it’s not hard to imagine that if, for instance, a future Conservative government is negotiating a trade deal, they may want to communicate with stakeholders in that country and make media interview choices accordingly. Regardless, I think Mr. Poilievre will continue to balance the need to reach key Canadian and other audiences through social media, mainstream media, and new media with other priorities on his time. I wouldn’t expect a Vogue photoshoot any time soon.”

Even if the Conservatives do muster a win, they will remain the primary target of the cultural conviction that has long defined the tone of Canadian politics: a maniacal anti-Americanism that constantly undermines and dilutes the Conservative cause. Not even the most decisive electoral mandate is enough to counter generations of brainwashing.

I set out to do a traditional profile of Poilievre — with questions, answers and intimate reportorial details about the type of sturdy, self-assured handshake that you would expect from Trudeau’s only plausible successor. I wanted to sit down with my fellow Albertan to talk about the direction our country is headed, to talk about the myriad forces degrading what’s left of our economy and fraying what’s left of our social fabric. I wanted to give him a fair look — a much fairer look than he gets from other Canadian journalists.

But Pierre Poilievre knows better. He knows the rules.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Explaining China’s IP problem

Since man’s early origins, the desire to possess gold has been a universal obsession. Gold was once viewed as the ultimate symbol of power and wealth. Governments amassed vast quantities of gold to finance their economies and political ambitions. Until the mid-twentieth century, leading national currencies were directly tied to how much physical gold was housed in national treasuries. But 500 years ago, Sir Thomas More got it right when he described gold as something “which in itself is so useless.” Today, rather than gold, what truly represents a nation’s strength is its ability to innovate and control technologies. Technology is the “gold” of the twenty-first century, and unless those who own a technology can prevent others from stealing or misappropriating it, it holds no value. The legal mechanism designed to shield technologies from theft is known as “intellectual property (IP) protection,” which takes the form of patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets.

While intellectual property protection is a high priority for both America’s Democratic and Republican parties today, this was not always the case. I once worked for Senator Hugh D. Scott who, in addition to being the Senate Republican Minority Leader, served as the vice chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights. One day significant revisions to US patent laws were being debated on the floor of the Senate, but, not surprisingly, very few senators were actually present. Senator Scott, known for his calm demeanor and very dry sense of humor, stood up and thanked his few colleagues for their attendance for what he considered to be a very important bill. Then he said (I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory), “I am very grateful for those of you here today, because if the top priorities for most of your constituents rank from one to 100, with one being the most important, then the patent law updates we are debating today are probably number ninety-nine.” Senator Scott’s point was that while most of his colleagues at the time did not realize (or care) about strengthening patent laws, they should have. In the 1970s, it was the expansion and enforcement of US antitrust laws that were viewed as a top legislative priority for Congress, not patents and copyrights. More than four decades later, priorities have completely reversed in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Given the critical role technology plays in growing America’s economy, the importance of protecting intellectual property no longer wallows at “number ninety-nine” — it is now in the top five.

An individual’s right to intellectual property is basically a Western concept. The US Constitution directly guarantees the right to own intellectual property and mandates that the US government protect the rights of inventors and property holders. Over the last 200 years, the concept of protecting intellectual property was aggressively exported to the rest of world by the United States and several other Western nations and made part of their national laws.

This brings us to how China and its leadership view intellectual property. China, like many other countries, particularly in Asia, has historically been reluctant about embracing the concept of intellectual property. This is a key reason why it is common for disputes to arise between Chinese officials and non-Chinese intellectual property owners with manufacturing facilities in China. China’s sheer reluctance to enforce intellectual property laws has often enabled Chinese companies to “encourage” (compel) non-Chinese companies to reveal their valuable technologies, even if those technologies are protected by patents, trademarks or copyrights.

For years, I personally found it difficult to comprehend exactly why the Chinese devalue intellectual property protection to such a great extent. By chance, I met a scientist who was born in China, and he helped me to understand why. After earning his PhD in chemistry, this scientist left China for the United States to work for a major international oil company. In a conversation over dinner one evening, I asked him why the Chinese were so reluctant to recognize the concept of intellectual property protection. He responded with a personal story:

As a young child, I lived in a very rural area of China. There were no hospitals or medical facilities within easy reach. So, every six or seven weeks, a doctor would come to our village to see patients and dispense medicine. Once there was a very sick child in the village. After examining the child, the traveling doctor prepared a secret formula to treat the child. Unfortunately, the medicine spoiled quickly and had to be remixed every few days. Because the doctor only came to the village every six weeks or so, this meant the parents would not have enough medicine to treat their child. The parents begged the doctor to reveal the formula so they could make it themselves, but the doctor refused, saying they would steal the formula and then it would no longer be his. The desperate family insisted that they would not do this and promised to keep the formula a secret. Eventually, the doctor reluctantly revealed the formula, emphatically making the parents swear they would never disclose it to anyone. When the doctor left, the parents mixed the medicine, and the child got better. After that, the parents began to tell the secret formula to others in the village.

Confused, I asked him to explain to me the point of his story. Hadn’t the parents broken their promise and essentially stolen the secret formula? He replied, “Yes, but isn’t it more important that the formula be freely shared to benefit many families rather than be owned by just one person?” In his way of thinking, the parents had done nothing wrong.

For decades, China has made protecting intellectual property particularly difficult for foreign investors and companies. This is especially true when it comes to trade secrets. While a valid patent can guarantee protection for a limited period of time (seventeen to twenty years), it is different for trade secrets. A trade secret, if handled properly, can essentially be kept a secret forever.

The Chinese government over the last decade under the direction of Xi Jinping has drastically increased governmental intervention in the activities of both domestic and foreign companies operating in China. This policy poses a particular threat for those companies that greatly rely on their own specialized and proprietary technologies. Non-Chinese companies often find themselves forced to disclose valuable corporate information if they wish to continue doing business in China. One common practice is to pressure foreign companies to work with Chinese entities as joint venture partners and to disclose their technologies in order to stay in the game. Also, whenever foreign companies try to do business with Chinese state-owned enterprises, non-Chinese technology owners should expect to find themselves pressured to disclose confidential information if they want future business.

Xi Jinping and China’s leadership are only now beginning to realize there is a real downside to their practice of ferreting out intellectual property from non-Chinese companies through any means. Increasing numbers of foreign companies, unwilling to risk their valuable information, are deciding against doing business in China. Some that were operating in China have already left.

Another, even more serious, challenge for China’s leadership is that as more and more Chinese companies look to market their products and technologies outside of China, they are demanding that their own patents and trademarks be respected around the world. What some Chinese have encountered instead is retaliation by the governments and industries of those nations that have been harmed in the past by China’s lack of respect for intellectual property rights. What, then, is the price to China’s economy and its international reputation? Ultimately, China’s access to the Western-based technologies it needs will be diminished because it refuses to recognize and honor the proprietary rights of others.

This is an excerpt from The Fragility of China: Breaking Points of an Invincible Regime (Encounter). This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Why Japan won’t repeat the West’s mistakes on immigration

Japan has become another piece of fodder for the West’s culture wars. After a recent visit with his family, talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel praised the country for its clean toilets and lack of litter, only to be lambasted by right-wing pundits such as Ben Shapiro, who accused the comedian of having leftist beliefs that are completely at odds with what makes Japanese society so safe and orderly. Namely, Shapiro argued, Japan is a closed-off nation, unpersuaded by arguments to allow mass migration, and its homogeneity and “unique culture,” along with a strict legal system, help sustain this “package deal.”

During the height of the Syrian refugee crisis nearly a decade ago, amid intense international criticism, Japan refused to accept asylum seekers from the Middle East. Last year, its government recognized only 303 refugees, still a record high. Japan has been more generous in regard to the war in Ukraine, with around 2,600 individuals classified as “evacuees” accepted as of February 2024, but most do not hold official asylum status. Roughly 2,000 currently remain in the country, with the majority hoping to eventually return to Ukraine.

But in March, just as Shapiro was praising Japan’s isolationism, its government announced that it projects the arrival of more than 800,000 skilled workers over the next five years to address the country’s acute labor shortage in industries such as construction and farming. This is but the latest part of Japan’s changed approach to immigration, dramatically increased over the past decade, as they hope to import a solution to their long-term deflationary economy and crippling demographic issues. Of the country’s population of 125 million, there were around 3.1 million foreign residents as of 2022, with a 660,000 increase from 2013 to 2019.

Japan is lost! pundits may cry. The country is doomed! Nihon gone woke! The terminally online right raged on Twitter, with one account — with more than 200,000 followers — claiming that Japan was already in the midst of “importing the third world.” Attached footage, of trash on the streets of Kyoto’s bustling Gion district, was its proof of the nation’s supposed descent into multicultural destruction.

The problem? The messiness and litter shown in the photo were the result of a recent surge of tourism, not an influx of new immigrants. Gion is already taking measures to restrict overtourism by banning travelers from certain geisha alleys, while it is practically certain that city officials will enforce stricter anti-littering laws as Kyoto prepares for the annual summer festivals that attract over a million people every year. If you take a closer look, Japan isn’t repeating the errors of Western mass migration, but learning from them. Fumio Kishida is no Angela Merkel.

The 800,000 number is only an estimate, not an invitation for foreign workers to arrive en masse. Under this program, there are two types of visas. The first imposes a maximum residency stay of five years, while the second allows workers to extend their stay, invite their families and renew their visas. Acquiring a Type 2 visa requires an additional skills test. The number who’ve actually arrived is around 208,000. Of those, only thirty-seven people have Type 2 visas.

To repeat: thirty-seven people out of 208,000 foreign workers. That’s less than 0.0002 percent, hardly the “invasion” that Western pundits say will take over Japan. Even the larger new number is unlike immigration to Western countries, as the program is specifically aimed at skilled workers, not economic migrants or refugees, and all candidates must display the Japanese language ability needed for communication in their fields. While the number of skilled workers entering Japan is expected to increase, only a very small portion will be awarded the Type 2 visa which provides a path to permanent residence.

Apart from the government’s selectivity compared to countries like the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, Japan has multiple cultural and societal bulwarks in place which prevent immigrants from overriding the local populace. You typically need to learn the Japanese language to a high level to have a successful career, which causes most to leave the country after only a few years if they cannot crack it. And language is only the first step. Japanese society remains highly dependent on in-group and out-group social dynamics, and a foreigner hoping to find their place in this system must adapt to the local customs or be excluded entirely.

Some Western observers say that an increase of foreigners will lead to the destruction of Japanese laws and a radical change to the country’s education system, but this too is unlikely. Only citizens can achieve high political power in Japan, and the naturalization process is daunting. Japan does not recognize dual nationality, and most foreigners are unwilling to renounce their native citizenship. There have been a handful of Japanese politicians of foreign birth or ancestry — the Finnish-born Marutei Tsurunen, for example, and Arfiya Eri, born in Japan of Central Asian parents — but achieving such status requires full cultural assimilation.

Most long-term foreign residents of Japan realize that a successful and happy life entails becoming a valued member of their local communities, even if they never become citizens. While it can be more difficult to make personal connections in large cities such as Tokyo and Kyoto, foreigners who find themselves in smaller rural areas are typically married to native Japanese, have children and are regarded by their neighbors as upstanding residents. Getting to this stage requires many years of hard work and career-building, which goes back to the important social relations that remain an essential aspect of Japanese society.

Japan has a long history of interest in foreign culture; the country typically takes what it finds useful and discards what doesn’t fit with its native customs. Go to the most remote countryside town and you’ll see a McDonald’s, a Nike store and an Italian restaurant. Yet Japan remains Japanese.

There is a common misconception among Westerners both on the left and right that Japan is a racist or xenophobic country. But in actuality, Japan is welcoming of those who are committed to assimilating, learning the language and contributing to society. Scholarship programs such as those sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology give a full ride to graduate students from abroad. During the Covid-19 pandemic, foreign residents were given the same stimulus payments as Japanese citizens in addition to the same access to vaccines. National health insurance also applies to everyone, whether they hold Japanese nationality or not. Permanent foreign residents such as Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman, boxer Bobby Ologun and television host Dave Spector are part of a long history of gaikokujin tarento — famous foreigners who are household names due to their high language proficiency and many years in show business.

The difference between Japan and Western countries, however, is that there is much more scrutiny placed on illegal immigration and the backgrounds of foreign arrivals. Japan does not face the same problem the United Kingdom, with arriving boats carrying thousands of illegal migrants, or even the same as closer neighbors like Australia. Compared to the over 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants who reside in the United States, Japan reports roughly 80,000 foreigners who are classified as illegal overstayers. In 2022, it was reported that less than 6,500 illegal foreign workers had entered Japan and those numbers are decreasing. Foreign residents who overstay their visa’s time limit face fines, prison time and being banned from entering Japan for five years or more.

Despite the government’s push to attract more skilled workers, actual immigration laws are getting stricter, with Japan ignoring criticism from the UN’s Human Rights Council over its decision to push for deportation of candidates who fail to achieve refugee status three times or more. A Cabinet-approved bill from 2023 accelerated the deportations of illegal immigrants and additionally stipulated that those convicted of crimes and sentenced to three years or more cannot remain in the country. The past decade has shown a consistent pattern of the Japanese government’s caring little for the opinions of foreign organizations on how it handles immigration; its priority is the integrity of its own laws.

Immigration has so far been a small problem for Japan compared to other countries, and given the poor impression often left by ill-mannered foreign tourists, the native population is likely to double down in defending their society from rapid cultural change. While long-term foreign residents generally follow the laws, the rapid increase of travelers from abroad, arriving in large numbers and annoying locals, is likely to be a continuing issue. Streamer Johnny Somali infamously caused an uproar on both sides of the Pacific last year for harassing Japanese people, causing frequent public disturbances and eventually being arrested for trespassing. Viral social media posts of other tourists displaying poor manners on public transportation have only added to local frustrations.

But for those who learn the language, have marketable skills and are dedicated to becoming tax-paying, assimilated members of society, Japan is largely welcoming. With beautiful sites, low crime, generally good healthcare, effective public transportation and a cohesive social structure, Japan has much which is the envy of the world. But you must follow the rules to stay — and those who do not are welcome to leave.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Remainers are going to be disappointed in Labour

Labour’s election manifesto has been criticised by many commentators for being too vague; like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book which would allow the party to do almost whatever it likes in government. This was highlighted today by Rachel Reeve’s remarks on Brexit. In an interview with the Financial Times, the shadow chancellor pointed out the need to improve elements of the UK’s trade deal with the EU and ‘reset’ Britain’s global image. This is said to mark a shift in tone (if not substance) from a party which previously did not want to focus on these issues. 

Yet, if you look more closely at the manifesto, that is not entirely fair. On questions of Brexit and trade, once you get beyond the waffle about Labour’s ‘mission in government’, there is actually a fair bit of detail in the document, and much of it amounts to business as usual.

On Brexit, the manifesto is plain that there will be ‘no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement’. Labour is also clear that it would be keen to negotiate a veterinary agreement ‘to prevent unnecessary border checks and help tackle the cost of food’. It also commits to co-operating with the EU on issues such as mutual recognition for professional qualifications and security. Today, Reeves mentioned a bespoke arrangement for rules in the chemicals sector. These all appear to be limited and, for the most part, pragmatic ambitions.

The adoption of a veterinary agreement is likely to mean that the UK would have to adopt EU food standards. But given that there has been a general reluctance to accept hormone treated beef and chlorine washed chicken in the UK, and the adoption of high-tech lab grown meat seems far away, that outcome is unlikely to have a very significant impact during the next parliament. 

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The more serious question posed by Brexiteers is whether we are likely to see backsliding on more significant issues, such as a customs union with the EU (a cause previously promoted by Sir Keir Starmer when he was shadow Brexit secretary). This is where the manifesto provides some more interesting detail. While it mentions trade unions far more frequently than trade deals, the short section on ‘championing UK prosperity’ actually appears to be a fairly no-nonsense continuation of the Conservative party’s ‘global Britain’ agenda. 

The manifesto promises to promote ‘deeper trade and co-operation’, including through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This suggests that Labour would complete the UK’s accession into the 11-member trade bloc (featuring Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand amongst others) which is one of the largest in the world. The UK has now ratified CPTPP, but is still waiting for other members of the bloc to agree its membership.

Cheerleaders for the agreement argue that UK membership will demonstrate the UK’s success as an independent trading nation (although it is broadly acknowledged that membership will bring only limited economic benefits to the UK, since we already have bilateral trade deals with almost all the member states). According to Chatham House, any real benefits are likely to be strategic: the UK can use its membership ‘to boost its global profile by influencing trade and international governance.’ 

But accession to CPTPP would also make it much more difficult for the UK to join a customs union with the EU – a point Grant Shapps was quick to highlight during our accession negotiations. He argued that joining the EU customs union would mean the UK would have to withdraw from CPTPP, which ‘would certainly anger some of our closest allies around the world, like Canada, Japan and Australia’. 

A further nod to business as usual is the Labour manifesto’s reference to a proposed new trade deal with India (which has been under negotiation since 2022) and a mention of ‘co-operation with partners across the Gulf on regional security, energy and trade and investment’ (a trade deal with the Gulf Co-operation Council has also been under discussion since the beginning of 2022). 

All of these commitments suggest that Labour will seek to straddle two horses during its first term in office, negotiating minor modifications to our arrangements with the EU whilst continuing with many of the policies currently being pursued by the Department for Business and Trade.

This is sure to disappoint Remainers looking for a more ambitious European policy. But they cannot say that Labour has not been straightforward in its approach. 

There have as well been some additional developments which should please trade wonks. First, Labour has committed to stop prioritising ‘insubstantial’ trade deals and has instead promised to publish a ‘trade strategy’.  This has been a long-term goal of a number of parliamentary select committees and it might allow the UK to focus on its long-term economic interests more effectively. 

Second, Labour has stated that it would champion Scotland and Wales through the UK’s trade networks. At present, both nations have argued that they do not have sufficient input into trade deals and that new agreements do not always reflect their particular concerns. This has been a particular problem for the Conservatives given they had to do business with the SNP in Edinburgh, who have never been shy of channelling P.G. Wodehouse’s archetypal ‘Scotsman with a grievance’.

One area where Labour is demonstrating a complete lack of ambition is finding a role for parliament. This should not come as a surprise. Trade policy is often contentious and new trade agreements often involve trade offs between different interests (for example on issues such as agriculture and visas). Nonetheless, there is a fairly strong consensus that it is important for there to be democratic consent and legitimacy for these arrangements. Whatever your party political views, everyone should want to ensure that parliamentary sovereignty is not bypassed by treaties which might constrain future domestic legislation on significant political matters.

During the last parliament, several select committees and parliamentarians (including the former Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost) argued that parliamentary consent should be required for new free trade deals. If Labour does achieve a landslide victory, it would make sense to give parliament a real voice on these important matters.

Labour peer suspended over Duffield tweets

Another day, another drama. This time it involves a run-in between Labour peer Lord Cashman and the party’s candidate for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield – which has resulted in the Labour peer losing the whip over some rather controversial comments…

Duffield, a vocal women’s rights campaigner who has received death threats over her stance on gender issues, announced on Friday that she will withdraw from election hustings events due to safety concerns. Blasting ‘constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation’, she revealed she was ‘being pursued with a new vigour during this election’, before concluding that ‘sadly the actions of a few fixated people has made my attendance impossible’. Instead the Canterbury candidate — who told the Times last week that she has spent approximately £2,000 on bodyguards while campaigning — will hold ‘secure’ local events.

But not everyone has been sympathetic to Duffield’s woes. On the anniversary of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, Labour peer Michael Cashman took to Twitter on Saturday to slam the candidate’s fears for her safety, writing: ‘She should do the decent thing and stand down if she won’t face constituents.’ Under a BBC article on Duffield’s statement, Lord Cashman also commented: ‘Frit. Or lazy.’ Charming…

Caught out over his comments, the peer then took to Twitter on Sunday with a statement of his own. ‘I apologise unreservedly for a post that I put out regarding the Labour candidate for Canterbury,’ he said. ‘I fully understand any complaints that will be sent to the Labour Party.’ It’s hardly a full-throated apology…

And now it transpires that Sir Keir’s Labour party has removed the whip from Lord Cashman over his comments. Starmer hasn’t yet put out a statement – but he won’t be thanking the peer for his cack-handed mid-campaign intervention.

Can Rishi Sunak reduce the Tories’ losses?

Every morning in Conservative Campaign Headquarters, Tory aides kickstart the day by blasting out Elvis Presley’s ‘a little less conversation’ on the speakers. The song – which includes the lyrics ‘A little more bite and a little less bark / A little less fight and a little more spark’ – has quickly become the anthem of the Tory campaign. ‘I know the lyrics off by heart,’ says one sleep deprived staffer.

Yet more than halfway into the election, there is little sign that the campaign is cutting through in the way strategists had hoped. The most optimistic one aide working on the campaign can be is ‘it has to get better in the next three weeks as it can’t bet much worse’. The polls continue to spell doom for the Tories – with an MRP Survation poll in the Sunday Times suggesting the Tories will be reduced to 72 MPs and Starmer will cruise to power with a 262-seat majority. It means the slight drop in Labour support since the campaign began is unlikely to be keeping Starmer’s team awake at night.

This week, expect both main parties to return to their core themes of the economy as they seek to focus voters’ minds on the choice at the election. On Wednesday, new inflation figures come out and then on Thursday, the Bank of England will announce its latest interest rate decision. There is little expectation of a cut, though markets were anticipating one in late summer before the election was called. What’s more, now the election has been called, the Bank of England won’t want to get anywhere near politics.

But Labour aides still see an opportunity here to have a conversation on the economy. Expect shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves to be out and about this week pushing the line that talk from the Tories of an improving economy is tone deaf and talking of her own plans for growth. With the manifesto out the way, the view of Team Starmer is that it is now on Starmer and Reeves to get out there and sell to voters the idea that economic growth is possible under their plans.

As for the Tories, Sunak has no plans to change tack and have a drastic campaign shake-up – despite the lack of progress so far. Expect the Prime Minister to sharpen up his attack lines this week as his party doubles down on its tax attacks against Labour and tries to dissuade voters from backing Nigel Farage’s Reform party.

The message will be that with the manifestos out the way, all cards are on the table from the Labour and the Tories – and there are plenty of questions remaining for Starmer’s party on tax. Despite heavy criticism of the figure, Sunak will keep warning of £2,000 of tax rises for households if Starmer wins. This, of course, is not a new line – but the Tories hope to use the coming week to focus the attention on Labour. That means a little less conversation about the Conservatives’ own plans or policies – and instead an attempt to make Labour fill the silence by revealing more of their own. They will then try to limit the Reform vote by arguing any votes for Farage’s party will lead to a larger Labour majority – and a government that will do the opposite of Reform voters want. This is how the party hopes to limit losses between now and polling day. It’s a tough ask.

A version of this blog appeared in the Election Insider email – sign up to Katy Balls’s subscriber-only Sunday newsletter here.

Anne Applebaum’s solutions to the ‘threat’ of autocracy

Liberal democracy is endangered more by its friends than by its enemies. Neither Moscow nor Beijing lured the United States into strategic humiliations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor was the rise of China to the rank of a great power brought about by Westerners sympathetic to Beijing’s communist system. If liberal parties and movements in the United States and Europe seem to be losing ground to populists, this is not thanks to Facebook ads purchased by Vladimir Putin in support of Donald Trump or Brexit. Liberals themselves sabotaged liberal democracy by prioritizing liberalism over democratic legitimacy for three decades after the Cold War — on fundamental issues ranging from trade and foreign policy to immigration and national values.

Anne Applebaum’s latest book, Autocracy, Inc., is woefully inadequate to the times in which it appears. She argues that kleptocratic autocracies such as Putin’s Russia, Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, communist China and theocratic Iran are working together — coordinated by shared interests — to undermine the liberal West, which blithely leaves its financial system, media and political integrity open to subversion. As a remedy to the creeping influence of authoritarian states, she recommends measures that are not altogether liberal or democratic themselves, although Applebaum seems only dimly aware of the danger that in fighting monsters a righteous liberal like herself might come to resemble one.

But that’s a timeless problem: liberal democracies have always had to ask themselves how much liberalism or democracy can be sacrificed in the name of confronting foreign enemies, in wartime or in cold wars. What makes Autocracy, Inc. obsolete even as it hits the shelves, however, is that the countermeasures Applebaum wants the West to adopt will only exacerbate liberalism’s legitimacy problem. When governments that are already distrusted by millions of their own citizens take on new powers to invade financial privacy, censor information and commit their countries to hot or cold international conflicts, the predictable result is the strengthening of a populist backlash.

In fact, Applebaum’s description of “Autocracy, Inc.” in the book’s introduction will sound to many populists exactly like the domestic elites and “Deep State” that they see as their mortal enemy:

Sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, a complex of security services — military, paramilitary, police — and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation… Corrupt, state-controlled companies in one… do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country may arm, equip, and train the police in many others. The propagandists share resources...

Tucker Carlson couldn’t have said it better. A kleptocratic financial structure — one that, say, “debanks” an enemy like Nigel Farage — works toward the same ends as police and intelligence agencies that investigate Christian homeschoolers or people who pray silently outside abortion clinics, while “technological experts” at Facebook and other social media companies collaborate with government agencies to suppress critics of Covid lockdowns, and propagandists in the media share resources like the Steele Dossier that was designed to discredit the democratic election of Donald Trump in 2016. Applebaum is rightly horrified by the patterns she sees in modern autocracies. Yet those patterns can also be found in liberal democracies, and her policy recommendations would only further empower the abusers.

“If judges and juries are independent, then they can hold rulers to account,” Applebaum writes. “If there is a genuinely free press, journalists can expose high-level theft and corruption.” Yet right-wing populists are not the only ones who doubt that these conditions exist in the United States today: consider the way progressives, and indeed ordinary Democrats, talk about independent judges like Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — or the doubts that the Black Lives Matter movement harbors about the justice of juries.

Neither the left nor the right in America — nor the mushy middle, for that matter — has much faith left in a mainstream press that appears highly selective about what “high-level theft and corruption” it spotlights. Media conditions in Russia or Iran or China are objectively far worse, but even Applebaum, while hyping the threat of foreign disinformation, is compelled to admit that outlets like the Kremlin-backed RT or “Chinese-sponsored channels, whose output is predictable and often boring” have little sway in the West. The media that matter here, for better or worse, are homegrown.

Autocracy, Inc. is a brief book that covers a great deal of ground. Yet in only 176 pages, not much can be covered well. This volume grows out of a 2021 essay Applebaum wrote for the Atlantic, “The Bad Guys Are Winning.” Her thesis was thin there and is thinner here. Applebaum would like readers to believe that today’s autocrats are a new breed distinguished by their kleptocratic ways from the more ideological totalitarians of the twentieth century. But there were plenty of kleptocratic authoritarians during the Cold War, too, and before it as well. She does see one development during the Cold War as setting the stage for today’s Autocracy, Inc.: when West German business and political leaders set principles aside to pursue profitable deals with the Eastern Bloc, they set a precedent for later Westerners to do business with dictatorships. Hopes of Wandel durch Handel, “change through trade,” became a smokescreen for self-interested actions that contaminated the West by mixing economic interests in the free world with those of kleptocrats outside, leading to fateful repercussions after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Western practitioners of Wandel durch Handel abetted the rise of political gangsters like Putin.

It’s an interesting tale, and Applebaum is at her best when examining history. She also notes the idealistic yet simultaneously self-serving post-1989 belief that trade with communist China would inevitably lead it to liberalism and democracy. Even here Applebaum is only half-right, though: she characteristically prefers simple moral contrasts to careful consideration of tradeoffs. China remained communist and grew into the power it is today, yet hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese were lifted out of poverty through the West’s economic engagement, and China did experience some liberalization between Deng Xiaoping’s era and Xi Jinping’s regime today. What’s more, the decline of global poverty over the last thirty-plus years is the single greatest accomplishment of which the liberal international order can boast, certainly in the eyes of liberals themselves. Yet greater prosperity for the world’s most populous nation — as China remained until recently — could only come through trade that also enriched Beijing’s undemocratic regime.

Taking Applebaum’s criticisms into account, trade with the Soviet Union’s satellites still seems like the right decision, one that only hastened the unexpectedly peaceful end of the Cold War. Whatever benefits the unfree governments of Eastern Europe may have reaped from pipeline deals and other economic relationships that buttressed state finances were more than offset by the depletion of communist morale, which was brought about largely by greater state dependence on the West and wider exposure of Eastern European peoples to Western goods and culture. Applebaum poses a serious question about how Western policies might have fostered kleptocrats like Putin, but Autocracy, Inc. isn’t big enough to provide a well-argued answer.

Applebaum’s strongest moments are those where her focus narrows. Her last chapter, for example, poignantly relates the story of Evan Mawarire, a Zimbabwean pastor who became a symbol of national frustration with Robert Mugabe’s corrupt regime, until government harassment and a state-orchestrated defamation campaign forced Mawarire into exile. Applebaum considers him a cautionary tale of how autocrats can use the tools of modern media to besmirch and discredit opponents, accusing them of being foreign agents or financially crooked themselves — attacks extended to dissenters’ families and friends as well.

Here, too, you might doubt whether such vilification is a novel tactic, even if some of today’s techniques are new. But novel or not, Mawarire’s plight is emblematic.

Autocracy, Inc. is full of calls for greater financial disclosure of foreign financial interests in American businesses and real estate; for bringing together activists and officials from different democratic nations to devise grand campaigns against disinformation; and for convening meetings of dissidents from various autocratic states. Applebaum might find support in unexpected quarters for some of her disclosure and transparency proposals, if only she could refrain from demonizing anyone on the populist right. But as it stands, Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice Party are all merely villains in her melodrama. She doesn’t mention that her husband, Radosław Sikorski, has a history with Law and Justice and presently serves as Poland’s minister of foreign affairs under a rival party’s government.

Applebaum wants to unite democracies against autocracies, but democracy is meaningless if it isn’t local: “the West” is not a people in the political sense of the term, and when transnational interests or ideologues — including liberal ideologues — band together, the scale of their project makes it less than fully democratic. Applebaum represents a view from nowhere, from a clique, not a country. Strong nations can indeed work together, but they have to be cohesive first, and the liberalism Applebaum cherishes only undermines that internal cohesion.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

John Freeman’s Hit and Run is gorgeously crafted

John Freeman’s gorgeously crafted novella, Hit and Run, is a gripping account of a few tumultuous months in a youngish man’s life. It is imbued with a black-and-white, noirish tinge, beginning as a detective narrative, moving through domestic drama and romance and eventually morphing into a ghost story, profitably exploring what these genres have in common. Based on real events, though it isn’t clear which elements are true, it shows how lives can unravel (and ravel) at the whims of fate, and at the same time demonstrates that everything is connected. This is a work about significant moments, about “a piece of time so sharp it carved a human being from existence,” glittering with reflections and refractions.

There are many plot strands running through this slim volume, all adroitly woven together, and all with themes of loss and care, change and surveillance at their heart. At the center is John Frederick, presumably an alter ego for Freeman, who appears to have a desirable life in a Sacramento that comes alive with waving palm trees. John Frederick writes for the culture section of an overseas newspaper — the dream! — and is recently married to the beautiful, faintly troubled Linda.

The tragedy that frames the work is what happens to a man called Philip, run down by a speeding driver at an intersection at 3 a.m. John Frederick witnesses it with some friends. The car vanishes; meanwhile, “there was a man splayed out on the center medi- an, a crowd of revelers laughing and teetering and pointing like one of those Hieronymus Bosch paintings.” The Bosch reference hints at the way this terrible event will draw John Frederick into an underworld of the mind, where the “more I grasped at reality, the more it frayed”; significant, too, is the image of the crossroads, places associated with other worlds and a sense that we are all potentially one step away from a life-changing event.

A series of coincidences underlines the novella’s themes: the morning after the accident, when John Frederick and Linda go and get a cup of coffee, Linda leans, unknowingly, against the car that killed Philip. It’s still smeared with blood. This tiny action also links her symbolically to the engine of destruction. The dead man turns out to be John Frederick’s “cousin’s boyfriend’s best friend,” a man everyone loved. Meanwhile, the owner of the car claims his nephew was driving it: attempts to find the nephew fall flat. And the car’s owner turns out to be Russian, which sends John Frederick into paranoia, wondering if at any moment a hitman will turn up at his door. Freeman asks: can we ever find what is true?

The investigation, with which John Frederick actively cooperates, at one point even helping the assistant district attorney look for footage of the accident, runs in parallel to another, as Linda begins spending rather too much time with her muscular personal trainer. John Frederick, racked by insomnia, spends nights working in a local bar and turns investigator himself. Using ethically dubious methods (he installs a keyboard tracker on his wife’s computer), it turns out that in some respects he’s not paranoid — he uncovers evidence that she’s thinking of having an affair with the trainer. This section is particularly tense, moving toward the inevitable confrontation. “We hadn’t even begun to write the thank-you cards for our wedding,” he notes mournfully. Linda comes across as selfish, unkind and fragile, but John Frederick is open about his own failings too.

As their marriage falls apart, John Frederick’s parents’ union is presented, by contrast, as one of remarkable resilience. His mother has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and when he visits them, he finds that “their living room has been turned into a full-time care center.” His father is selflessly looking after her: there is a very touching moment when John Frederick leaves and his father holds up his wife’s arm to wave goodbye, as if she were able to do it herself. And yet with powerful honesty, John Frederick admits that he was pleased to depart, and wonders why he is “so much more involved with the murder of a stranger.” The love between his parents is a beacon, even as his mother fails — and it points toward the hopeful part of the novella. This arrives when John Frederick meets the sophisticated Farah and swiftly falls in love with her; their relationship helps keep him from teetering into the underworld. When John Frederick moves into a new apartment, Freeman takes an unexpected turn and executes an absolutely chilling ghost story. Is it John Frederick’s paranoia? Is it the ghost of the dead man? Is he really being followed — or is there something else going on? We never quite find out, which makes it all the more deliciously eerie. Freeman’s writing is impeccable, clean and unfussy, sometimes ornamented with a striking, poetic phrase, marking plot points and alterations in scene and season with subtle compulsion. In the end, justice is achieved, but in an unexpected way. Like a shard of glass, this piece seems light, but will strike its readers deeply.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Stephen King’s You Like it Darker shows a master at his peak

It is not hyperbole to call Stephen King the most influential horror writer alive. Across page and screen alike, nobody else can claim to have had such an expansive and lasting impact on popular culture. King’s name has become so commonplace that it’s easy to take it and him for granted, and to forget that behind the ultrafamiliar and now-ubiquitous branding there lies, in fact, a wild and strikingly original mind and a beating, bloody, passionate heart.

You Like It Darker, King’s latest offering, is a highly accomplished and masterful collection of twelve short (and not so short) stories, all blistering examples of King’s powers. Though some have seen the light of day elsewhere, most are published here for the first time. All are worth the purchase.

The book inevitably harks back to Carrie, King’s debut novel, published fifty years ago this spring. Carrie was an immediate hit, and its place in the canon was permanently secured by the seminal film adaptation that followed two years later. The notion of a “cultural canon” is important when discussing King: his work is astonishingly adaptable, and his cinematic offspring have consistently joined the ranks of the Objectively Great (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery, Stand By Me, The Shining: the list goes on). The original film of Carrie is arrestingly good — and for a nearly half-century old movie, so redolent of its time, the immediacy it retains is invigorating.

Earlier this year the novel was re-released in a special anniversary edition, with a new introduction by Margaret Atwood, highlighting the book’s feminist values. The two volumes work well read together, though I hope they do not turn out to be the bookends of his career — his new book is titled after Leonard Cohen’s final studio album, You Want It Darker, released just sixteen days before Cohen’s death and widely considered to be a self-conscious conclusion to, and commentary on, his life’s work.

The inherently fragmentary nature of short story collections means that Darker chimes subtly with the epistolary style of Carrie, in which the narrative is pieced together using newspaper reports, witness interviews, and so forth (much as Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker did with Frankenstein and Dracula). The sum of its twelve tales ultimately pieces together something deeper than their individual plots. The exploration of and anxiety around writing and talent that defines the first, “Two Talented Bastids,” has obvious resonance; the addict cataloging his life’s strengths and failings in “Fifth Step” and the exploration of old age and mortality in “Willie the Weirdo,” “On Slide Inn Road,” “Laurie” and “Rattlesnakes” (a sequel to Cujo) do likewise.

Though I may be reading too much into it, I can’t help but see the hint of a breadcrumb trail in “Willie the Weirdo,” when King references the famously semi-autobiographical novel A Day No Pigs Would Die, written by and featuring Robert Peck. “Two Talented Bastids” discusses metafiction at some length — and the fictional author appears in his own work, where a favorite review of his debut novel is also quoted: “Not much happens in the first hundred or so pages of Mr. Carmody’s suspenseful yarn, but the reader is drawn on anyway, because there are violins.” This brilliant story opens the collection, and it is King at his best — utterly invigorating, finding the magic in the humdrum. There are most definitely violins.

King often writes about writers, and it is impossible not to see him in this collection. He is famously close to his family — he has collaborated professionally with both his sons and been married for fifty-three years — so it is no surprise to find story after story dwelling on the horrors of the elderly widower, lost and empty, or the intensifying pitch of loneliness in the old and childless.

Old age features constantly in these stories. Sometimes the old are evil, sometimes mad, often heroic — but for King they are always powerful. Always rich and complex and possessed of half-glimpsed secrets that the generation below them are too self-absorbed and pompous to notice, but which the generation below them feel inexplicably drawn toward. King leans heavily into the grotesque, inevitable indignities of age and infirmity, of its cruelty, but through it he finds something near to grace, to nobility.

Covid shows up in many of the stories — sometimes just as a passing reference, sometimes as a plot point. (When the pandemic began, many pointed out apparent similarities between its spread and the plot of King’s 1978 novel The Stand, although the author played it down.) King is admirable in his ability to write in an ever-developing present, and not merely to keep his peak years in aspic; his characters do not exist in a world without cell phones, social media or tablets. Though these nods occasionally stand out a little awkwardly (“we have Spotify” roar some torturers in “Finn”), for a man whose work covers seventy titles over half a century this demonstrates an impressive commitment to retaining a connection to the confusing world-as-is, not just the profitable world-as-was.

King has always been vocal about his politics, and at first glance the stories have a tendency to echo his positions — the aged writer in “Bastids” “didn’t vote for Trump the second time. Couldn’t bring himself to vote for Biden, but he had a bellyful of the Donald.” The regular appearance of this take, alongside some superfluous interposed modernisms (“you can google it”), can sometimes feel forced and unnecessary.

However, after an internal monologue in “Road,” in which a middle-aged son castigates his elderly father for the racism, homophobia and misogyny inherent in his generation, it is the problematic, repugnant old man who must risk himself to save his family, and the pompous, progressive son who fails when it really counts. King is not simplistic.

In 2021 he caused a stir by speaking publicly about being blocked on Twitter by J.K. Rowling for having disagreed with her position on trans issues (his third child, a Unitarian minister, currently identifies as gender-queer). The internet exploded at this, supporting him and attacking Rowling, prompting King to tweet: “My opinion is that Jo Rowling is wrong about trans women. Leave shitty and hateful out of it, please.” He later went into more detail, saying “she is welcome to her opinion. That’s the way that the world works. If she thinks that trans women are dangerous or that trans women are somehow not women… she has a right to her opinion.”

Though a decade or two ago this would have seemed an obvious position, today it is a brave one, and a bold statement. His embrace of the role of centrist-boomer-dad provoked outrage among some younger followers, and last year King was denounced for praising Rowling’s recent crime thriller, The Running Grave. “J.K. Rowling at her best,” he said, “recalling the sheer readability of the Harry Potter books, but much darker. This got me through a difficult time.” Despite the flak he received for daring to prioritize art over activism, King includes a respectful mention of her in You Like It Darker, with a wry and humble nod to the fact that her astonishing wealth and relatively recent success dwarf his own; there are very few writers for whom that is the case.

The key to unlocking this morality, which reads as hypocrisy to the childish, is that King worships story. He is a loyal lover of writers and of readers, and this is more important to him than anything so shallow as politics. In his afterword he writes that “horror stories are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic. A paradox, but a true one. I believe it is the unimaginative among us, those incapable of appreciating the dark side of make-believe, who have been responsible for most of the world’s woes.” I believe he is right.

If You Like It Darker is the goodbye that its title implies (and I cannot bring myself to believe it is, for a writer as prodigious as King can surely not just stop), then it is a worthy goodbye. Those who dislike King’s work will find plenty to dislike, but those who love it will find far more to love. The final page concludes: “Great thanks to you, dear readers, for allowing me to inhabit your imaginations and your nerve-endings. You like it darker? Fine. So do I, and that makes me your soul brother.”

Few could write this and really, truly mean it. King does. It is that heartfelt, Maine-bred authenticity that has always been at the core of his art and his success. Perhaps the best summing-up is, again, from the mouth of the aged author in “Two Talented Bastids.” “Butch was a fine artist, but he was also a good man. I think that’s more important.” Stephen King is both.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Is the hype for The Bee Sting justified?

On a recent visit to the bookshops of New York, I found all the usual suspects front and center. If you wanted David Grann, Amor Towles or Salman Rushdie, you had come to the right department; if your tastes veered more toward the Air Fryer Cookbook, that particular whim would be well catered for, too. But the single book I saw on most prominent display everywhere I visited was the new novel by the Irish author Paul Murray, The Bee Sting. A shop assistant in McNally Jackson professed herself an admirer of both writer and work. “I’ve never seen anything like it. We sell a dozen copies a day, sometimes more. It’s hit a chord with people in a way that other books just don’t.”

When The Bee Sting was published last year, it attracted the kind of critical acclaim most authors would sell family members for. Katy Waldman declared in the New Yorker that “Murray shows off his formidable range, immersing us in worlds so distinct and textured that they seem to blot one another out” and the New York Times Book Review, in an atypical rave, gushed “Murray’s writing is pure joy — propulsive, insightful and seeded with hilarious observations.” It has been on countless “book of the year” lists, won literary prizes by the score in Murray’s native Ireland and elsewhere, and none other than Sarah Jessica Parker has raved about it. A television series is now in development. The forty-nine-year-old Murray now has a fair claim to be the most exciting writer of his generation — and, if the next book he publishes continues the trend, one of the wealthiest, too. Does he merit the raves?

When you have both sides of the Atlantic — and Carrie Bradshaw — united in praise about something, it usually suggests one of two things: a triumph of undue hype, or a genuine masterpiece. When I sat down to read The Bee Sting, I hoped it would be the latter. After all, Murray’s three previous books (so far, a slim oeuvre, but give him time) had contained one highly accomplished and blissfully funny debut, the 2003 tragicomedy An Evening of Long Goodbyes; an early magnum opus, the 2010 boarding-school tragicomedy Skippy Dies; and his least successful (but still enjoyable) novel to date in the form of 2015’s tricksy and metaliterary The Mark and the Void. Now The Bee Sting has lifted him into household-name territory.

Like Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, but funnier, The Bee Sting revolves around the interlinked destinies of four members of a once-wealthy, now-struggling Irish family. The patriarch, Dickie, has inherited a car dealership from his overbearing father Maurice, and is in increasingly dire straits, both financially and personally, for reasons that become clear as the novel progresses. His wife Imelda is weighed down by grief and misery; she was to have married Dickie’s younger brother Frank, who died in a tragic accident, and ended up wed to Dickie because they conceived a child almost by accident while lost in mourning. This child, their daughter Cassie, is planning on heading to Trinity College, Dublin — where Dickie once studied himself — but is distracted by the usual temptations of alcohol, boys and, perhaps, her own awakening sexuality. And, finally, their younger child, PJ, is suffering from the attentions of a bully who claims that the Barnes family has impoverished his mother. Never mind, PJ has found a friend online, who’s keen that they meet up in Dublin and play video games together. Nothing can possibly go wrong, can it?

Over the course of 600-odd pages, Murray marshals elements of tragedy, black comedy and drama with consummate skill. Even its first act, in which he describes the boredom that Cassie faces in the small, nondescript Irish town where they live, conveys a remarkable sense of torpor and disenchantment without being at all tedious. Some of Murray’s contemporaries (naming no names, but you can probably guess who) could do with learning from him how to write about mundanity without becoming ploddingly mundane. Then it’s PJ’s turn, after which the narrative pivots into a startlingly bold, wholly successful literary conceit, as Murray moves into the inner voice of Imelda, using no punctuation to signify her lack of education. This could have been insufferable — karaoke Joyce — but it’s both formally adventurous and narratively vital, as it fills in the gaps and connotes why, precisely, Imelda’s disenchantment has arisen the way it has. And then it’s Dickie’s turn, and the book finds its heart.

In every one of Murray’s novels to date, there is a character who, if it’s presumptuous to suggest that they speak for the author himself, conveys an ineffable sense of sadness amidst the humor to be found elsewhere. In An Evening of Long Goodbyes, it’s Anglo-Irish aristocrat Charles Hythloday, who has, like a less extreme version of Huysmans’s Des Esseintes, dropped out from the world to spend his days drinking gimlets and watching Gene Tierney films, but, like John Kennedy Toole’s indelible creation Ignatius J. Reilly, is rudely forced out of his inertia and compelled to mingle with the common man. In Skippy Dies, it’s the schoolmaster Howard “The Coward,” whose attempts at teaching history are diverted by his twin obsessions with World War One and his comely colleague Miss McIntyre. And although The Mark and the Void is less successful, it does contain a novelist called “Paul,” whose interactions with the book’s investment-banker protagonist provide most of the funniest scenes; in one, Paul confesses that he has launched an adult-themed website called “myhotswaitress.com.” When asked why it contains the rogue “s,” he admits “myhotwaitress.com was already taken.”

So it is with Dickie Barnes, the true protagonist of The Bee Sting and its most poignant character. It would be spoiling the novel’s skillfully orchestrated development to reveal precisely why Dickie is so fascinating, and so sympathetic, but Murray beautifully evokes what it is to have grown up in the shadow of other people — a successful, alpha male father; a younger brother whose footballing prowess has made him the toast of the town; and even a business rival, Big Mike, whose attentions toward Imelda are rather less than professional.

It all comes back to Dickie’s ill-fated time at Trinity, and the eventual revelation of precisely what occurred there — both for good and for ill — anchors the book in tragedies circumstantial and personal. I cannot remember any other novel that evokes the intellectual arrogance — occasionally justified — of a gathering of clever, ambitious students as well as The Bee Sting, not least in its description of the University Philosophical Society, home of chancers and would-be politicians alike, who can deliver stirring feats of oration without believing a single word they say.

Where The Mark and the Void may have faltered for non-Irish readers is in the rather schematic way it took on the post-2008 financial crisis, in which the so-called “Celtic Tiger” boom deflated almost overnight with the end of cheap credit and low interest rates, and attempted to convey its impact through a state-of-the-nation novel. The Bee Sting never attempts to make the Barnes family speak for the Irish people, but there is a richness and warmth to their depiction that makes this as much a page-turner as any airport novel. I read it from front to back over a couple of days, neglecting every other domestic or professional obligation. I had to immerse myself, greedily, in its complexities and ambiguities. It made me laugh, cry, gasp and, by the ending, it left me in a deliciously horrible state of suspense, for reasons that will become clear to anyone who reaches it.

To be “the great Irish novelist” of our time is an honor that is eagerly sought. The likes of Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín, John Banville and even Kevin Barry have all put forward respectable claims to the distinction. Yet at a time when “the comic novel” is regarded almost as an unclean and flashy thing, any author who can make his readers laugh as well as think is a rare talent indeed. The next time I walk into McNally Jackson — in a month, a year or a decade— I suspect that there will still be copies of The Bee Sting prominently displayed, and that the staff will be just as quick to rave about it and its remarkable author. And that has to be the greatest test of longevity, and genuine admiration, that any writer can ever begin to hope for.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Kevin Barry’s latest novel is bursting with energy, brutality and poetry

“He walked as calamity. He walked under Libra. He was living all this bullshit from the inside out. Oh, he scathed himself and harangued and to his own feet flung down fresh charges. But there were dreams of escape, too — one day you could ride south on a fine horse for the Monida Pass.” Well met by moonlight, Tom Rourke, doper and dreamer, formerly of County Cork, now a miner in Butte, Montana, in 1891. Welcome to yet another wild and whirling world made by Kevin Barry.

Barry’s first collection of short stories, There Are Little Kingdoms, appeared in 2007; he was already celebrated in his native Ireland as a creator of darkly comic troubled characters compassionately drawn. The publication of “Fjord of Killary” in the New Yorker in January 2010 marked his arrival on an international stage as a fiction writer of immense promise. Barry’s first novel, 2011’s City of Bohane, set in a not-far-distant future (that manages also to be archaic) in a mob-controlled town in the west of Ireland, and boasting characters like Jenni Ching and Fucker Burke with their own individual voices, fetishes, madnesses and desires, had critics and writers from Irvine Welsh to Pete Hamill — in his glowing review for the New York Times — comparing Barry to Joyce, and Bohane to Ulysses. An apter comparison would be Ulysses via A Clockwork Orange, for Barry is more comfortable than Joyce with both a polyglossia of argots and the old ultraviolence. Such comparisons would be a heavy weight for any writer to carry, but Barry’s borne it well for over a decade. His three short story collections and three novels have received immense acclaim and won substantial prizes. Barry and his wife Olivia Smith have also been the editors and publishers of Winter Papers, a rich, deep annual arts anthology, since 2016. When, you wonder, does the man sleep?

Barry, unlike Joyce, has not been overtly autobiographical in his writing to date, from the searing Bohane, with its naturalistic characters “gobblin’ hoss trankillisers like they’s penny fuckin’ sweets” to the psychological chaos of 2015’s Beatlebone, a broken series of revolutions around John Lennon’s 1978 trip and head-trip to Dorinish, an island off the County Mayo coast Lennon had bought in 1967. Unlike Joyce, Barry doesn’t confine himself to stories set in or about Ireland. His last novel, 2019’s splendid, scary Night Boat to Tangier lets you know from its title where the two old drug smugglers — admittedly Irish, yes — are putatively heading. Though Barry continues to live in County Sligo, in recent years he’s been spending time in North America, from Montreal and Toronto to Los Angeles, and now he’s set his sights on Butte.

The Wild Wild West is the perfect setting for Barry’s abilities and agilities. The Heart in Winter is under 300 pages long, but in no way is it slight. It is a rambunctious galumph of a story, a saga, yet somehow sparely, cleanly told, a slim volume bursting with energy, history, possibility, brutality and poetry. Irishmen figure prominently in the novel, appropriately enough. The city ports of Boston and New York were flooded with Irish immigrants from the late 1840s, and after many boys and men went to fight for Lincoln and the Union Army, they heeded that supposed directive of Horace Greeley’s to go West. Navigators built the new cross-country railroads and died by the thousands from cholera and other plagues; other Irishmen and first-generation Irish Americans went down into the dark dungeons in the earth, from the Appalachian coal mines to the hard rock mineral mines of Montana. A fast-aging boy named Tom Rourke, hero of The Heart in Winter, is one of the latter.

How is it that Barry manages to write an utterly original novel that is so steeped in American history and actual accounts of the American West, as well as its fictions in writing and on film? As I got to know Tom Rourke, memories kicked aside the swinging saloon doors in the recesses of my mind, happily emerging to complement Barry’s story. Threads of past tales of the West, in stories and songs and movies, are powerful in this novel: loners like Alan Ladd, Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood; young Sean O’Brien dying of snakebite crossing a muddy flooding river in Lonesome Dove; Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and Etta Place on the run; the teenaged lovers of Annie Proulx’s “Them Old Cowboy Songs,” in their rickety little cabin on the lone prairie. The arrival of a palomino mare put me in mind of Willie Nelson’s red-headed stranger from Blue Rock, Montana, who loves his dancing bay pony far more than he’ll ever love any woman living. Real stories are Western tales, too; and Mari Sandoz and Old Jules, the Wilder girls, the Donner party, Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea all were rich in my mind once again, when I finished this novel. My own recollections and imagination were enabled, encouraged, by Barry’s seductive rush of language and riveting telling of a tale. This is a writer for whom to be always grateful.

Trotting through the book you experience vivid hallucinations, natural phenomena, religious mania, jealous rage, pure cruelty and selfless love. You learn many new words, some resurrected from the 1890s, some nineteenth-century Irish slang, some Barry-made. Use them yourselves now: gowl, loolah, thorn-bled, hatchwork, godhaunts, hooktip. They’re on every page and seamlessly so, increasing rather than trammeling your understanding — and pleasure.

Tom Rourke is not just a bard in search of a muse, a boy in search of a girl and something of a dandy, fueled in what he undertakes by opium, peyote, rotgut hooch and/or an overwhelming desperate love: “He wore the felt slouch hat at a wistful angle and the reefer jacket of mossgreen tweed and a black canvas shirt and in his eyes dimly gleaming the lyric poetry of an early grave and he was satisfied with the inspection.” He is also a writer, something new for a major Barry character. As The Heart in Winter begins, Rourke is writing a letter for his mate Holohan to land him a mail-order bride, coming west from Boston. This is a part of the “westward movement” little discussed in histories until fairly recently, but it happened. Hollywood knew about it — who can forget Grace Kelly as Amy Fowler, arriving in that dusty desert town to become Mrs. Sheriff Kane?

Rourke crafts the letter carefully, and as we see many pages later, successfully: “He had it within himself to help others. He made no more than his dope and drink money from it. He had helped to marry off some wretched cases already. The halt and the lame, the mute and the hare-lipped, the wall-eyed men who heard voices in the night — they could all be brought up nicely enough against the white field of the page. Discretion, imagination and the careful edit were all that was required.” Just look at the power of fiction to create, transform, cheat and lie. Barry knows it all better than any living novelist.

The small vignettes and scenes that light up the world of Butte and the endless wilderness around it are terrific. Witness one Con Sullivan, or Fat Con, behind the counter of his “eatinghouse” on a Sunday morn: “He cut white loaves on the slicer and chopped the liver into neat hanks with a murderer’s relish. He was a man in his time. He was alive to his place and task. He swung his great belly from grill to counter and back again and there was grace to it. Dankly his occult coffee simmered and there were canteen pots of tay stewed black as porter. Dead bloodshot eyes sat in a row for him along the high stools and every last set of them was beholden.” And another man, bereft, disappointed in love, who “hated especially the eloquent. Words dropped from his own lips like stones. He could put not warmth nor humor in them. It was not that he did not feel such things. He had been lonely in his life always but never before heartbroken.”

Rourke has a Gypsy-Davy charm, and it appeals not only to readers, but to the new youngish wife of an old man. The story is timeworn but always resonant, especially when the wife is as sassy and resilient as is Polly Gillespie. Not just to survive but to thrive: how to do it, if you’re a young couple, in a wild dirty town on the fringe of what’s called civilized? How to do it on the run through the nowhere woods, into the unmapped, with a sheriff and a pack of Cornishmen, far from their native sea but as mean as the worst pirates and led by a giant named Jago, on your trail? The Heart in Winter is a quest, a chase, a ballad, a love story, a Western, a magic gritting romp that as it goes gets only more compelling, in the skipping reels of its telling.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Suburbia’s irredeemable reputation in the American canon

“My God, the suburbs!” John Cheever, the short-story writer who has rejoiced in the nickname “the American Chekhov,” had what can only be described as ambivalent feelings about the twentieth-century housing developments that grew up on the outskirts of major cities. He said of them that “they encircled the city’s boundaries like enemy territory and we thought of them as a loss of privacy, a cesspool of conformity, and a life of indescribable dreariness in some split-level village where the place name appeared in the New York Times only when some bored housewife blew off her head with a shotgun.”

Cheever was not wholly consistent himself. The prospect of glacial monotony did not stop the author moving to the suburbs and putting down some very firm roots both of the familial and literary kind. TIME magazine styled him “the Ovid of Ossining,” a reference to the scenic Westchester village where he lived from 1961 until his death in 1982. Admirers of Mad Men might recognize Ossining as the hometown of the ultimate suburban couple, Betty and Don Draper. This was a conscious homage; as the show’s creator Matthew Weiner has said, Cheever’s stories were a considerable influence on his writing. The show might be named for Madison Avenue, but when it comes to suburbia, “mad” is also the operative word. For a whole generation of writers trying to make sense of postwar America, the suburbs offered particularly fertile ground for “madness in the mundane” storytelling. Commingled with all that ennui, there could be sex, drink and existential messiness galore.

All this gives the lie to the fact that “suburban” has long been a code word for “boring.” As stereotypes go, rows of cookie-cutter houses, ritualistic barbecues and the hum of lawnmowers is arguably rather pleasant. I could think of worse places to be. To this day, for many the choice between a ranch-style or Dutch colonial domicile is still an encapsulation of the American dream. Yet behind the well-to-do properties and well-tended lawns lie beating hearts and harder passions. Not for nothing have filmmakers from David Lynch to Ang Lee taken suburbia’s existential mores and turned them into high — at times even disturbing — cinematic art. Yet even the most talented of directors cannot hope to compare to the literary energy with which America’s greatest writers have immortalized the suburbs.

Take Cheever’s famous — although now increasingly, and unfairly, neglected — short story “The Swimmer,” which first appeared in the New Yorker sixty years ago. It starts with one of the best opening lines of all time: “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.’” The backdrop is instantly recognizable. A group of moderately-heeled suburbanites sip, or slurp, gin by a poolside. The protagonist, Neddy Merrill, might lack a tennis racket but the day’s essence is one of “youth, sport, and clement weather.” Neddy gets the bright idea to “swim across the county,” figuring that by diving in and out of his neighbors’ pools, he can make it all the way back to his own home, eight miles away, all while getting progressively more intoxicated.

This might sound like a lark and a half but Cheever’s brilliance lies in his sudden, almost imperceptible turn toward the sinister. For as Neddy crashes through adjoining backyards to greet his fellow residents, we hear whisperings of his personal deficiencies: “They went broke overnight” and “he showed up drunk one Sunday and asked us to loan him five thousand dollars.” More worryingly, Neddy can’t seem to remember his fall from grace. Even his own mistress scorns him. Adultery is baked into this take on suburban mores, at least in the Sixties: the 1968 film version of the story, starring a hunky Burt Lancaster (shirtless and dripping wet), manages — unbelievably — to be more sexed-up than its source material. Let’s just say there is a lot of underwater groping.

It’s a great shame that “The Swimmer” has fallen out of fashion, most likely after being relegated to the public-school syllabus. In his narrative, Cheever depicts suburbia as both sublime and suffocating. In the end, it becomes a surreal nightmare where the night-harpies are gossip and scandal. It may be this fine writer’s greatest work, turning an apparently all-American idyll into a limitless source of dread.

Should “The Swimmer” need an accompanying summertime ditty, easy on the ear but with troubling underlying resonance, the Monkees’s hit 1967 single, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” would do nicely. For the Monkees — a made-for-television-series but remarkably accomplished rock band — suburbia was a weird “status symbol land,” and deeply suspect. Monkee Michael Nesmith once said during an interview for Blitz magazine that the song was about “a mental institution.” The joke writes itself, not least because it has the disturbing ring of truth.

Postwar writers were drawn to suburbia for creative inspiration in part because of this contradiction in terms: underneath its stagnant, conformist veneer, it housed myriad human complexities. Two other great “bards of the suburbs,” John Updike and Richard Yates, similarly drew on their own experiences living there to fuel their fiction. Updike lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts, from the 1960s and set much of his fiction in New England. Yates based his semi-autobiographical Revolutionary Road (1961) — an unflinching portrayal of a couple’s unraveling hopes in the face of stifling mid-century conformity — on the troubled year he and his first wife spent living in Redding, Connecticut. In the novel, Frank Wheeler, father and husband, is a smarmy intellectual trapped working as a salesman for his father’s company, bored out of his brain and yet somehow in thrall to the “needle of the office clock.” The family intends to flee to Paris to escape from the rat race: matters do not proceed as planned.

If Cheever is the poet of the suburbs, and Yates the moralist, Updike is an anthropologist. He is also the most optimistic. Indeed, Updike has more fun in general with suburbia’s propensity to moral dubiousness. He took an almost perverse joy in facing up to a fact most choose to ignore: Suburbia’s superficial respectability made sexual deviancy more likely rather than less. Human desires, of course, remain the same whether they’re tucked safely behind a white picket fence or cohabiting in a high rise. As the protagonist of Updike’s Rabbit, Run tetralogy, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, realizes, there is “one world: everybody fucks everybody.” Rabbit, a former highschool basketball star who finds himself stuck as a salesman for a kitchen gadget called the Magipeeler, cheats on his pregnant wife to escape the suburban doom loop. He eventually, as the title suggests, runs away entirely.

For Updike, extramarital affairs were part and parcel of suburban existence. Not only was he a serial cheater in real life, his novels have become synonymous with domestic debauchery. When he graced the cover of TIME magazine in 1968, it was under the headline “The Adulterous Society.” Updike knew the old adage “sex sells” by heart; his novel, Couples, was published that year to much critical acclaim. Its upfront sensuality and candid portrayal of how the pill’s advent shook up traditional notions of marriage won it high praise. The novel is an intriguing study in realism, but one comes away from reading it with a sordid aftertaste, remembering little else but the heaps and heaps of polyamorous swinging and copulation. David Foster Wallace, approvingly quoting a friend, went for the jugular (and nether regions?) when he dismissed Updike as “just a penis with a thesaurus.”

Far more fun is Updike’s Witches of Eastwick, published forty years ago this spring. In place of the depressing sexual realism of Couples, we get magic realism, some light relief for suburban suffering. In Eastwick, “wickedness [is] like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.” Updike’s strand of wickedness is a jolly one, and the mischief makes it his funniest and most light-hearted work. It was later memorably filmed with Jack Nicholson — who else? — as the devilish, in both senses, outsider coming into suburbia and upturning bored housewives’ lives. Perhaps Updike’s satirical point is that, in the humdrum sterility of the suburbs, the appearance of Satan is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Would that such treats came to its observers. Much of the despair one finds in the suburban fiction of Updike, Cheever and Yates leaked out from their own frustrated lives. Cheever was a repressed homosexual who turned to drink. Yates was bipolar and alcoholic. Updike was doomed to a level of priapism that might sound enviable but was also an exhaustingly time-consuming addiction. (Was it he or another writer who would say, after the umpteenth orgasm of the day, “there goes another novel”?) For them all, suburbia was something of a Faustian bargain: one must accept that the price for this middle-class Shangri-la is an accompanying middle-class malaise.

So suburbia’s reputation as a quaint, leafy, relatively “nice” place to ride out one’s life has yet to be redeemed. Perhaps it does not deserve to be. As it stands, its place as a literary locus in the American canon is a fraught one. Pleasant Valley, Pleasantville, whatever its place-holder name, in the worlds of these three bards, it is riddled with vice and viciousness alike, of a kind to make even Don Draper blush. Perhaps suburbia isn’t so pleasant after all.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Bianca Bosker’s snapshot of the art scene

Early on in her entertaining account of five years immersed in the New York art scene, author Bianca Bosker is informed that, as far as the art world is concerned, because she is a journalist, she is the “enemy.” Given that the job of a journalist is to find things out, then explain and communicate those findings, it is unsurprising that a hermetic, deeply self-protective society like the art world would be resistant to journalistic inquiry.

In reality it’s not just Bosker’s profession that makes it difficult for her to get past art’s gatekeepers, but a whole litany of personal and social failings that are gleefully enumerated by an art dealer early on. Bosker, the dealer tells her, doesn’t dress right; she wears makeup (that shows she’s trying too hard); she’s uncool and asks too many questions. The last is a critical part of her job as a journalist, but it’s also a personal flaw in the too-cool-for-school world of art: if you don’t know already, you certainly don’t want to advertise it.

The dealer’s list is wildly superficial and exclusionary, highlighting everything an outsider might preemptively loathe about the art world — though it must be said that such behavior is not exclusive to those circles. But it’s also an important early lesson in what helps drive the milieu, maybe more than the art itself: context.

In the context of the art world, “context” can mean a variety of things, Bosker notes, from education and personal taste to your “cloud” of associations. Its parameters are often nebulous and subjective, which is also intended to keep them obscure and difficult to decode, creating an endlessly self-reinforcing feedback loop.

Bosker’s reasons for wanting to try to understand this arcane world are personal as much as professional. As a girl, she loved painting and considered applying to art school, but after graduating and moving to New York, probably the global center for contemporary art, she became alienated from what she had once loved. She recalls her émigrée grandmother, who taught art to children in a displaced persons’ camp in Austria following World War Two, and who imparted to Bosker her love of art. And the art world’s omertà acts like catnip to a reporter. “Nothing gets a journalist’s undivided attention like hinting something is rotten to its core, then clamming up,” Bosker writes of the near-paranoid guardedness she repeatedly encounters.

The sense of secrecy is pervasive, creating an airless atmosphere of exclusivity, which explains people’s undying curiosity about the art world. As one dealer puts it, mystery builds intrigue — which, we infer, also drives prices. Protecting that mystery infects everything, from press releases that read like riddles to extreme vetting of anyone who enters the ecosystem. (Ordinary “Joe Schmos,” Bosker is told, need not apply.) But any world whose default mode is discretion will also be rife with abuses, not to mention financial chicanery. (“We’re all white-collar criminals,” one dealer remarks “breezily.”) When boundaries don’t exist, when the personal is also the professional, exploitation is par for the course.

Mission stated, though, Bosker jumps into finding out about art. She works for two different galleries specializing in the work of emerging artists (the “blue chip” spaces presumably impenetrable) and sells art for one of them at a satellite fair of Art Basel Miami Beach. She assists an artist with a growing profile, stands for hours as a guard at the Guggenheim Museum, shadows a pair of collectors and attends countless studio visits, exhibitions and fairs, as well as a conference in Belgium on the “visual science” of art. She primes canvases, paints walls and even volunteers to have an artist sit on her face as part of a conceptual performance. Bosker’s enthusiasm, her curiosity and tenacity are infectious. While plenty of art-world denizens condescend to her or keep their distance, some are happy to consider the rules and absurdities of the wider systems in which they operate. Bosker has her frustrations at the start, but they come from wanting to understand rather than criticize. (The tartest zingers come from insiders anyway: “If I had to choose between going to Art Basel Miami and dying in a plane crash, I’d pick going down in flames,” says an unnamed “veteran.”)

As a snapshot of the art world now, or at least up to the pandemic, Get the Picture adds to the surprising number of books and films set in this clubby world. These range from Sarah Thornton’s 2008 anthropological book Seven Days in the Art World, released at the end of the boom years, to filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s savage 2017 satire The Square. It is a world deeply resistant to change, but not immune to it. Financial insecurity remains the norm; figurative art becomes covetable again. Social media, especially Instagram, offers a route in for some, as well as a more accessible look at the networks that undergird the art world. As in the wider world, gossip and speculation spread fast online and money moves almost as quickly, which can be devastating for an artist in the early stages of a career. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it an “art system” than a world, a “machine,” as it is nicknamed.

But what drives people’s interest in art, as opposed to what might drive their interest in the goings on of the art world, is, in Bosker’s telling, profoundly linked to what makes us human. One of the book’s best descriptions of being around the “beautiful things” in a museum comes not from an insider but a museum guard, who says, of proximity to that beauty, that “it enlightens you, it makes you feel — you know what? It gives you that feeling of being rich.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

CreatiVets and the art of war

On Independence Day, Americans recall not only the ideals that led to the founding of the United States, but the sacrifices of those who have made our unique experiment into an ongoing reality.

Recognizing the challenges that affect many who have been in the military, CreatiVets, founded in 2013, provides help to disabled veterans through engagement with the arts. Program participants learn how to address and share their experiences through studio arts, music, songwriting and creative writing. The organization’s goal is to help these veterans “transform their stories of trauma and struggle into an art form that can inspire and motivate continued healing.”

I recently spoke with CreatiVets’s art director Tim Brown, social media coordinator Elizabeth Huefner and deputy director Kyle Yepsen to talk about how they put this into practice.

As you might expect, CreatiVets’s location provides many opportunities for participants to engage with music, and music is by far the most popular. Yet from the beginning, visual arts have also been important: After he was wounded in Iraq, CreatiVets’s founder Richard Casper credited his art classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, particularly in ceramics, for saving his life from post-traumatic stress and depression.

Ceramic art has also proven to be a helpful entry point for many CreatiVets participants. “Ceramics tends to be in our nature as humans, to be playing with earth,” says Brown. “It’s not like sitting someone down in front of a canvas or a piece of paper and asking them to come up with an image about what’s going on in their minds. With ceramics, you can put clay in front of someone and just have a conversation with them while they’re playing around with it. And almost before they know it, they’ve created something. We’ve found it the easiest way to get some folks to open up.”

Programs include a wide variety of media, from painting and photography to metalwork and sewing. In addition to its long-standing partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago, CreatiVets partners with the Glassell School of Art in Houston and Belmont University in Nashville; it’s always looking for more art institutions to work with. Program participants are transported, housed and fed by the organization at no cost, especially important since many are taking a step into the unknown.

“We’ve had people come to the programs who haven’t left their home in years,” Brown notes. “So to get out of their house, get on an airplane and go study art on a college campus can be a little overwhelming.” Yet the programs, which typically last from two to three weeks, can have a profoundly positive effect on the participants straightaway, Brown finds.

“I’ve noticed so many times that after they start,” says Brown, “the vets get so excited and ask, ‘So how do I work this into my project?’ Then they learn something else and ask, ‘How do I combine this into my project?’ It’s really fun to see how ramped up everybody gets. They just have to get through the door.”

“We really want to help them to tell their story,” Kyle Yepsen says. “That’s the biggest part, telling their story in a way that doesn’t require them to talk to strangers or be so vulnerable in front of people that they feel like they can’t do it. We want them to continue to create art and tell their stories.”

Part of that storytelling involves being able to display and share the works that they create in a group show, which can reflect some amazing personal transformations.

“We had [veterans] come through the program who, at the beginning, didn’t want to talk about anything,” Brown recalls. “But by the end, you see them standing in the middle of the gallery, talking about their work, excited to share it with anyone who wanted to come through and ask questions. It’s just such a phenomenal behavioral change.”

This therapeutic aspect of creating art has been observed, and indeed experienced, by CreatiVets staff as well. Brown, himself both an artist and a distinguished combat veteran who served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, understands on a personal level.

“We’ve had so many success stories. For example, these vets might still experience combat nightmares,” Brown says, “but after the program they’re not having them every night. It’s the little successes that can make a big difference. Just working with this organization has been therapeutic even for me, and dealing with my own combat time, as it has for many who have worked with us. We’re all very passionate about how art can help, because we see the value of it every single day.”

Participants come from a variety of levels of artistic experience, but the majority have none at all. While occasionally a participant may already have a passion for a particular field, most do not currently have any creative outlets. And some end up doing something completely different from whatever they had been pursuing previously.

“Ahead of time, we question them about the things they’re doing,” Brown explains. “If they’ve done music, they try the art programs. If they’ve done art, they try music. The point is that maybe the outlet they have right now isn’t as effective as they want it to be, and trying something different may help.”

Building community plays a significant role as well. “One of the biggest pieces of our programs,” explains Yepsen, “is that we always have veteran mentors.” Past participants are paired with new ones. “We really try to tailor this mentor relationship with individual veterans — if you were a Marine who served in Iraq post-9/11, we’ll try to find you a mentor-alumnus who has a similar service history.

“One of the biggest benefits from being connected with the veteran community,” Yepsen notes, “is that we do get contacted by people who say, ‘Hey, my friend is not doing well, and I think they would benefit from one of your programs: can you help them?’ And we reach out and see what we can do by getting them involved as quickly as possible.”

Elizabeth Huefner recounts the story of an art-program participant whose friend, an alumnus, put him in touch with the organization a few years ago. “This guy was thinking, ‘All right, I’ll go out there, and do all of this artsy-fartsy stuff for a few weeks, and then I’ll go back home and blow my brains out.’ He was very suicidal. Then he came through the art program, and today he’s our veterans outreach coordinator.”

Sharing personal experiences with potential participants, who are often skeptical, creates a personal connection before the participant even arrives. The organization also provides guidance to those who discover that they may want to pursue the arts at a professional level.

“We have a separate program for people who actually want to pursue a creative career,” says Huefner, who has recently begun working with female veterans on music instruction. Among other possibilities, alumni may enroll at discounted rates at the art institution where they’ve studied. Adds Yepsen, “One of the benefits that we have is in providing smaller-sized classes, where there are maybe eight to ten veteran students. They can develop an intimate relationship with the university and the university instructors, so that if they do have an interest in going [on], we can help them with making those connections.”

Past participants are brought back not only as mentors but as teaching assistants to help both students and instructors. “The class is still led by the university professor or instructor,” Yepsen explains, “but the program alums are there, too. They stay on campus with the veterans, so that if somebody has a trigger at two o’clock in the morning, they can walk down the hall and knock on their mentor’s door. And we bring them back not only so that they can help in the classroom and outside of it, but so they can also further explore their own artistic interests.” This gives alumni a second opportunity to work with the educational institution — one came to the program with no artistic experience at all and is now a professional photographer. Another has paintings represented in regional galleries: both come back to mentor and instruct.

“We’re not suggesting that art is something these vets have to take away and try doing for the rest of their lives,” Brown says, “but they always keep up with each other, and there’s always a handful in every class that become practically inseparable. A lot of our alumni are still talking to each other on the phone, or meeting up when they’re in the same city. The community that we’ve built within the programming we offer is so vital to their continuing to reach out, stay active and tell their story.”

Yepsen sees the organization as part of the “American agreement.”

“Part of being Americans is that we have a role to play in the world. We all say, ‘Respect the troops,’ and ‘Thank you for your service,’ but this is that next step. I think it’s a requirement for Americans to make sure that men and women who volunteered, when they need something, it’s our job to step up and say, ‘This is our part of the American agreement that we all have with each other, and we’re going to take care of you.’”

“Kyle and I are both civilians,” agrees Huefner, “and personally I have no military family or background. I’ve always been patriotic and appreciative of what our military does and the sacrifices they make. But there just aren’t enough things in place to help, or to reach so many people coming back with so many problems.” To address this, she says, the organization is starting chapters around the country to connect veterans, even for something as simple as a regular cup of coffee.

“The biggest benefit of having these community groups,” adds Brown, “is that if they know [someone] who is struggling, they can reach out and talk to them, and then someone at a chapter level can come to us to see if our programming can help. If we can build these communities, we can try to address that by reaching more people.

“Knowing how much of an impact this programming has made on individual vets, and being able to bring that to someone else,” Brown concludes, “and watch them connect through something like art, and to be a part of it… Maybe this is just a small group, but it’s such an important one.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

The evergreen, ageless Rolling Stones

Are the Rolling Stones the new Rat Pack?

Or put it another way: how did the Stones achieve this curious headlock on our affections? If anything, it seems to get stronger over time. In the band’s current US stadium tour, aptly sponsored by the old-age interest group AARP, a million customers are each paying $100 for a seat that allows you to aim a pair of binoculars at a distant video screen. Want an actual view of the stage? It’ll cost you up to ten times as much. Still, it’s all gravy. The last major Stones tour grossed $550 million at the box office. Add a couple of hundred million for all those souvenir T-shirts and Mick Jagger bobbleheads, and you’ve got roughly the same total as the annual operating budget for Pittsburgh, with enough left over to buy out the eight-seat Virgin Galactic for a morning’s space tourism.

But to get back to the Stones and the Rat Pack. Am I alone in noticing the resemblance? Watching the three surviving band members go through their paces today brings memories of another trio of well-seasoned performers lurching around stage with a tumbler of Jack Daniels in hand, even if the cigarettes the Stones’ twin guitarists once smoked as relentlessly as laboratory beagles now seem to have gone the way of the more exotic stimulants.

The notion that Frank Sinatra’s touch of macho swagger and Dean Martin’s engaging slur might have been handed down to, respectively, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards seems only fitting, while Sammy Davis Jr. visibly lives on in the hammy, spindly-legged Ronnie Wood. It’s Robin and the 7 Hoods all over again, part drama, part shtick, above all offering a sort of vicarious buzz in seeing old codgers behaving badly.

Because they’re so brazen, so unapologetic and so astonishingly upfront about it, the Rolling Stones have gradually acquired special status as the officially tolerated moral slobs of the middle class. On some fundamental level, we need the Stones, if only as a living reminder that one of rock music’s chief initial functions was to act as an emotional pick-me-up for a weary public. What a sad lot most of today’s stars are by comparison.

As it happens, there’s another link between the Stones and the Rat Pack’s take on the Robin Hood myth, because both were unleashed on the American public exactly sixty years ago.

The Stones’ first contact with the US, in New York on June 1, 1964, came as something of a mutual shock. There was at least a modest welcome awaiting them at the newly-christened John F. Kennedy Airport, where the band’s management had bused in a couple of hundred local teenagers to greet them. Also on the upside, it was to be the sort of accessory-heavy tour that continues today, with a line of “exclusive merchandise” including everything from socks to underwear to newsboy caps. If a teenager could wear it, Mick and the boys were on it.

On the downside, there were the indignities of the band’s reception by the mainstream media. The Stones’ first major TV appearance came on the old Hollywood Palace show, hosted by Dean Martin himself — in retrospect, a logical baton-handing development, if less obviously so at the time. Martin and the Stones loathed one another on sight. The generational clash started the moment the band arrived and continued through their brisk performance of “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” during which Brian Jones appeared to repeatedly flip off his host while playing the harmonica. Lurching towards the old-fashioned stand mike, Dino then delivered a monologue about the Stones having “low foreheads and high eyebrows” before introducing a trampolinist as “the father of the band — he’s been trying to kill himself ever since.”

On June 5, the Stones played their first live American concert at the 10,000-seat Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. Thanks in part to name-checking the town in the opening number, “Route 66,” the band went down a storm. Such was the commotion that nobody on stage noticed when a teenaged boy flipped out, wrestled a policeman’s gun away from him and sent a bullet into the plywood floor just feet from where Mick Jagger was dancing around with his maracas. That aside it was a promising start, if not entirely representative of the Stones’s reception as a whole. After San Bernardino, the group played four generally less well-received shows in Texas, where they appeared before a backdrop of hay bales and horse manure at the San Antonio state fair. The band’s local warm-up act was a tank of trained seals, and immediately afterward a performing monkey, who, unlike them, was called back for an encore.

There was another upswing of the band’s fortunes back in New York, where they played two riotous shows at Carnegie Hall. Even before the band slouched onstage, the screaming reached the pitch of a jet aircraft. The night’s emcee, the local disc jockey Murray “the K” Kaufman, kept his introduc- tion short. “Lezz ’n’ gennelmun, the Rolling Stones. Let’s hit it!” It wouldn’t have mattered had he been reciting the Black Panther Party manifesto, because the words were lost in a cyclotron of hormonal abandon. Amid ear-splitting screams throughout, the Stones blasted out an eleven-song set, threw down their instruments and ran. That concluded the band’s freshman tour of North America. The five musicians weren’t entirely satisfied by the experience, and

Mick Jagger was particularly disenchanted by the advance arrangements in Detroit, where they performed in front of 371 customers dotted around the 14,000-seat Olympia Stadium. “We feel we’ve been given the business here,” he noted at a sullen eve-of-departure press conference. “We’ll never get involved in this kind of crap again.”

And to be fair, they haven’t. The numerous Stones tours since then have been an exercise in steadily accumulating comforts (like the backstage vases of precisely arranged, dethorned white roses stipulated in their current contract rider), as well as proof positive that Jagger and company were the first to realize that the business of jetting around the world banging out your old hits would become divorced from actually making records: you no longer need to do the latter to make millions doing the former. These things are necessarily subjective, but there are apparently sane Stones fans out there prepared both to pay the equivalent of a month’s rent to see the band in concert and to unblushingly tell you that the last really good album they made was 1972’s Exile on Main Street.

All of which raises the question of how, exactly, the Stones have kept the show on the road when almost all their contemporaries, Paul McCartney excepted, have long since given up the struggle, or at least settled on a life of cringe-inducing appearances flaunting their beer-guts and dodgy hairlines on the nostalgia circuit.

For one thing, it probably doesn’t hurt that for much of the past sixty years Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have had access to the very finest medical and (especially in Keith’s case) legal back-up money can buy. When in 2019 Jagger needed a heart-valve operation he was immediately flown by private jet to a New York hospital and was later able to recuperate first at his beachfront home in Florida and then at his château in the Loire Valley, which was also where he rode out the Covid pandemic. And good luck to him; he’s earned it. But it’s not exactly the six-month wait for a similar procedure on Britain’s National Health Service, followed by a convalescence, or lockdown, in one’s suburban abode.

Similarly, when in 2006 Richards fell while relaxing in the branches of a palm tree in Fiji and hit his head on landing, a full-scale emergency team swung into action. An air ambulance flew the veteran guitarist to the nearest major hospital, in New Zealand, where surgeons drained blood from the patient’s brain, reattached his scalp and put him on a morphine drip, thought to be a not wholly unfamiliar experience for him. Remarkably, Keith was back on the road with the Stones just weeks later.

But perhaps the secret to Jagger and Richards’s longevity goes further back than that — and has its roots in the values with which they grew up in the bracingly austere years of postwar Britain.

In Jagger’s case, this involved a childhood in suburban London characterized by hard work, service to others, a carefully rationed diet and a grueling exercise regime supervised by his physical education-buff father Joe. For at least the first twenty years of his life, Mick’s routine took place amid a welter of sporting equipment and barbells — and was punctuated by twice-weekly attendance at the local Anglican church, where he was known not so much for his singing voice as for his volunteer work and a quiet determination to make something of himself.

In 1962, Jagger’s school-leaving report called him “a lad of good general caliber” with “a quality of persistence when he makes up his mind to tackle something.” More than sixty years later, it would be hard to quibble with that core assessment of his character.

Similarly, some discrepancy exists between the raised-by-wolves legend of Keith Richards’s upbringing and the reality, with its emphasis on duty, rank and sound traditional values. Richards’s paternal grandparents were both well-respected town councilors in the London borough of Walthamstow, where his grandmother served as the first female mayor. His pater- nal grandfather was a decorated World War One hero. Richards’s father was among the first troops to hit the Normandy beaches on D-Day and was badly wounded as a result.

Perhaps there was a touch less emphasis on physical fitness than across town at the Jaggers’, but Keith still grew up with the benefits of a largely fat-free diet, as well as a fundamental sense of patriotism and service. As a nine-year-old, he was remembered as an “angelic-looking” chorister (yes, this is Keith Richards we’re speaking about) performing for the newly crowned Queen, earned his merit badges as a Boy Scout, and later showed a pronounced streak of English romanticism by spending his first songwriting money on the thatched cottage in the Sussex countryside where he still lives today.

As Richards himself once put it, in his inimitable style: “I can be the cat on stage any time I want. But really I’m a very placid, nice guy — most people will tell you that. It’s really just to placate this other character that I work.” A prince of darkness, perhaps, but a prince nonetheless.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.

Why the Tories’ tax black hole attack on Labour will backfire

The Conservatives love trying to reduce their estimates for the cost of a Labour government down to a neat per-household figure, which makes it easy for voters to appreciate but comes with the danger that the figure will fall apart on closer examination. That is what happened with Rishi’s Sunak’s claim, made in his ITV two-way debate with Keir Starmer, that Labour is planning tax rises of £2,000 per household. That turned out to be over four years rather than one, as many people might have assumed, and turned out to rely on all kind of assumptions which were made by Conservative party researchers rather than the Treasury officials to whom the Prime Minister tried to attribute the whole exercise.

So what about the Conservatives’ latest claim that Labour’s promise to deny new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea will leave a £4.5 billion black hole in Labour’s spending plans, working out at £160 per household? This, like the £2,000 figure, turns out to be spread over the whole of the next Parliament rather than just one year. But is it realistic? 

Given that, according to an OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) estimate, oil and gas companies active in the North Sea this year will pay a total of £3.8 billion in taxes – corporation tax, carbon levies, windfall taxes and so on – it is not implausible that denying new licences could result in £900 million a year is less revenue (i.e. £4.5 billion over five years). But it is impossible to make any accurate estimate of this because of the volatility of oil prices. If they slump, there may be no oil company profits to tax – just as there weren’t in 2020. Were oil prices to fall like they did then, and stay low, just as they did for several years after the slump of 2014, Labour’s ban on new oil and gas in the North Sea would be academic – no-one would want to invest there anyway.   

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But if the Conservatives want to start talking about black holes in public finances, shouldn’t they admit to the far larger hole in their own tax and spending plans? Under current government plans, all new cars sold in Britain will have to be pure electric by 2035. This will mean that eventually the government will lose all revenue that it earns from fuel duty: which totalled £24.7 billion in 2023/24 – 2.2 per cent of all government income and equivalent to £850 per household per year. That is an enormous black hole, and how do the Conservatives plan to fill it? Answer comes there none.

It is true, of course, that the same black hole will open up under Labour’s green policy – indeed, it will open up a little sooner, as Labour wants to bring the 2035 ban on petrol and diesel cars forward to 2030. But then Labour hasn’t done what the Conservatives have done  in their manifesto, which is to rule out the obvious alternative to fuel duty: road pricing, where motorists are charged directly to use the roads, on a per-mile or some other basis.

The Conservatives could go a lot harder on the cost of Labour’s green policy. The party’s plans to decarbonise the grid entirely by 2030 are considered by many, not least the GMB union, to be impractical at any price. Preposterously, Labour is claiming that it can be done at a cost to taxpayers of £1.7 billion a year (to Great British Energy) plus £3.5 billion a year in borrowing. Contrast that with National Grid ESO’s estimate of what it will cost to decarbonise Britain’s energy system by 2050 – which it has put at between £2.8 and £3.0 trillion. If Labour is relying on private capital to do most of the heavy lifting it might be disappointed – the present government last year received no bids whatsoever for its latest round of offshore wind farm auctions. It has since raised the long-term, guaranteed, index-linked ‘strike prices’ by 70 per cent.   

Labour’s claim that consumers will save £300 a year thanks to cheaper renewable electricity is already out of date: it was based on an estimate by green energy lobbying group Ember, using last year’s prices of gas and renewables. Since then the price of gas has come down and the price of building wind farms has risen sharply. 

The Conservatives’ problem is that while Labour’s green policies lay themselves open to attack the Tories’ policies are only a little less over-ambitious. Raise the spectre of Labour’s hugely expensive plans and they can’t help but draw attention to their own. 

iPad scandal MSP accepts £12,000 ‘golden goodbye’

Dear oh dear. Back to Scotland and the chaos of the SNP. Former health secretary Michael Matheson was suspended for 27 days and received a 54-day salary ban last month after he tried to use the public purse to cover his £11,000 iPad data roaming bill. Now it transpires that the Nat has accepted a £12,000 ‘golden goodbye’ despite his suspension. Talk about shameless…

Although the former minister was hit with one of the harshest punishments that Holyrood’s standards committee has ever dished out, it turns out that Matheson has still accepted £12,712.25 of resettlement grant money. Holyrood’s rules allow for cabinet ministers to receive 90 days’ pay when they leave the job and despite calls for Matheson to forgot the payment, the Falkirk politician — who tried to get taxpayers to pick up the tab on his £11,000 roaming bill — accepted it.

Matheson was initially defended by new First Minister John Swinney, which prompted outrage from voters across the country. The FM claimed that the suspension charge was ‘prejudiced’ and said that voting through the sanctions would bring the ‘parliament into disrepute’ — which hardly went down well with Scotland’s taxpayers. Swinney backed down after his support of Matheson threatened to derail the SNP’s election campaign, although SNP MSPs abstained on the sanctions vote.

And while charges of dishonesty have been levelled at Matheson over the whole debacle, he has now been branded a hypocrite too — after remarks he made in the early 2000s came to light where he, um, called for an end to ‘golden goodbyes’ himself. How the tables turn…