Angus Colwell

In the Spectator offices, my colleague Mary Wakefield and I often end up talking about young people while we’re making tea. She thinks I’m a bit too cocky about civilisation. Apparently when she starts telling me something weird that she’s seen my generation doing, my eyes start darting madly, looking for a way out. She probably looks at me and thinks I’d open the gates to the barbarians to avoid the horror of an earnest opinion. The re-election of Donald Trump has us feeling different ways too. Mary has written this week about the phenomenon of ‘Trump trauma’. There’s some pretty wild examples in there, all of which are deserving of our laughs. But I found these people strange, even though they’re of my generation, and I didn’t recognise them.

This piece was originally published in a different form on 12 July. Gareth Southgate, who has just resigned as England manager, deserves better than what he got. He is not perfect, as some football journalists imply (you end up suspecting they’re particularly chummy with the right people). But it’s not too much to say that Southgate achieved something special in his eight years.   In 2018, he took England to the semi-finals of the World Cup, the first time since 1990. He took England to the final of Euro 2021, and then repeated the achievement despite playing far worse. True, we went out in the quarters in 2022, but against a France side that would end up making the final.

Britain’s general election campaign is being watched around the world, especially in countries that have relied on our support. One of those countries is Israel, where I spent a few days earlier this week as part of a Europe Israel Press Association delegation. I write about it in next week’s magazine, but there was one exchange that stands out. I met Amichai Chikli. He’s Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism, is a member of Benjamin Netenyahu’s cabinet, and also of his Likud party. His job is to look after ties between the State of Israel and Jewish people. It’s a big task: the ministry’s website says the ‘Israeli government sees itself as being responsible for all Jews worldwide’.

Gareth Southgate, England’s semi-intellectual, waistcoat-strapped manager, knows he’s on his last chance at Euro 2024. He’s failed to bring a trophy home three times now and four will be unacceptable. This perhaps explains his newfound ruthlessness: he’s cut his most heroic failures from the squad who will travel to Germany. Jack Grealish, who brought good vibes but not a trophy, is gone. Jordan Henderson, who was kept around to set a good example, is no longer needed. Mason Mount, the teachers’ pet, didn’t make the cut. Nor did Marcus Rashford, the nation’s favourite player-activist. Harry Maguire, a Dunkirk boy for a squad trying to ape Normandy, is not worth the injury risk.

Mark Sedwill is a serious man. He has a master’s in economics from Oxford. He worked in Cairo, Nicosia, Baghdad and Islamabad over several decades as a diplomat. He was a UN weapons inspector, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and served as the Nato senior civilian representative there. He became cabinet secretary in 2018 after the death of Jeremy Heywood, and left just two years later after the first wave of Covid. Throughout the document, thoughtless language produces thoughtless thinking A shame then, considering his pedigree, that he has entered the world of corpspeak and insubstantial guff.