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10 October, 2023

Israel says it has regained control of its border with Gaza, and found the bodies of more than 1,500 Hamas terrorists involved in Saturday’s attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that retaliation for the atrocity has “only just begun”; Hamas has threatened to execute a civilian hostage for every unannounced air strike on the Palestinian territory. Keir Starmer will pledge to “build a new Britain” in his party conference speech in Liverpool today, says BBC News. The Labour leader will promise to grant extra powers to local mayors and put up the “next generation of new towns”. The rapper 50 Cent has sponsored an under-14 girls football team in Cardiff. The father of one of the AFC Rumney players asked the star while working with him on a recent tour, says Wales Online. “As the old adage goes – if you don’t ask you don’t get.”

An Israeli airstrike hits Gaza yesterday. Sameh Rahmi/NurPhoto/Getty

The bloody end of Pax Americana

Israel and Hamas will “dominate the headlines” in the coming days, says David Patrikarakos in UnHerd, but “something else is going on” beneath the surface: the consolidation of the relationship between Iran and Russia. Both countries have been supportive of Hamas: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has “funded, armed and trained” the terrorist group since the early 1990s; Moscow has recently welcomed its leaders for official visits. Only last month, Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu visited Tehran to meet top military officials and tour the country’s drone and missile arsenal. This budding friendship is driven not just by the fact that they are both international pariahs, but by a “deep-seated desire” to loosen America’s grip on the world. For both sides, “every Hamas rocket that strikes home is not merely another act of terror but yet one more hole punched through the Western order”.

The sad truth is that the “Pax Americana of the post-Cold War period” is already over, says Hal Brands in Bloomberg. For a brief spell after 1991, Washington and its allies had “such decisive advantages” that geopolitics remained relatively stable. But with Russia, Iran and China now seeking to create their own spheres of influence, that stability has fallen apart. In Europe, there’s the “barbaric” war in Ukraine; Azerbaijan’s recent seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia; and the rising threat of renewed conflict between Serbia and Kosovo. In the Western Pacific, tensions are rising over Taiwan and North Korea. In Africa, “coups have become contagious”; in gang-ridden Latin America, democracy is eroding. The Israel-Hamas conflict is a stark reminder that “we’re back to world politics as usual – and world politics is usually an ugly, violent affair”.

In the wake of the felling of Northumberland’s famous Sycamore Gap tree, The Guardian has compiled a list of other arboreal icons around the world. They include the 275ft-tall General Sherman in California, a giant sequoia estimated to be around 2,700 years old; the Great Wisteria Tree (which is technically a vine) in Ashikaga Flower park, north of Tokyo; the Tree of Life, a ghaf tree that has somehow survived – and thrived – for 400 years in the otherwise barren Arabian Desert in Bahrain; and the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, the 1,000-year-old specimen within which Robin Hood supposedly hid from the Sheriff of Nottingham. See the rest here. 

Joseph Schmidt, a former US Army sergeant, was arrested on Friday and charged with trying to hand over military secrets to the Chinese, says Task & Purpose. It doesn’t look like the most sophisticated attempt at espionage. According to the indictment, Schmidt searched on Google for “countries with the most negative relations with US” and “can you be extradited for treason”, and visited a Reddit thread called “What Do Real Spies Do and How are they Recruited”. Perhaps most damningly, he allegedly created a 22-page document with the title “Important Information to Share with Chinese Government”.

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Olympians-to-be? England’s Sarah Glenn celebrates a wicket. Stu Forster/ECB/Getty

Cricket is coming to the Olympics, says The Guardian. The sport has been added to the lineup for the 2028 games in Los Angeles, along with squash, lacrosse, baseball, and flag football (essentially touch American football). The main factor is India, where Olympic broadcast rights are currently worth around £15m but should now be worth ten times more. Cricket has been played in the Olympics only once before, at the 1900 games in Paris, when France and England played a single match for the gold medal. England won.

Blair in 1997. Jeff Overs/BBC News & Current Affairs/Getty

Sorry Keir, there’s no Cool Britannia this time

Whatever vibes they’re trying to conjure at the Labour Party conference, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times, “it’s not 1997”. Keir Starmer is allying himself as much as possible to New Labour – Peter Mandelson is apparently stalking around the event like he owns the place, while the once-hated Tony Blair Institute has a stand. But it would be a mistake to think the party is about to do what it did back then. Politicians think everything is about politics. “Sometimes, though, even politics isn’t entirely about politics.”

Back in 1997, it was simply impossible to be “20 years old and against New Labour”. Unlike the fusty Tories, Tony Blair and co showed an “instinctive comfort” with a changing Britain. Political folklore tends to bundle New Labour together with Cool Britannia and Britpop. But Oasis and Blur had “fought their greatest duels” by 1995, hitting the tabloids mostly under John Major. Labour simply rode the wave of an already transformed culture, leaving the ruling party “thoroughly wrong-footed”. None of this has a parallel today, and Starmer knows it. He reminded the BBC last week that “the mood in 1997 was one of optimism”, and that now is a very different time. This is why people are wrong to write him off as too focused on “drab managerialism”. What better focus is available? He has no Britpop, no Cool Britannia, no uplifting wave of social change on which to ride. “A new dawn has broken,” said Blair, but dawn was breaking anyway. Starmer’s promise is more modest. “And today, maybe, that’ll have to do.”

📈🤨 People who voted for the first time as teenagers in 1979, and are now in their early sixties, have only seen the governing party change twice, says Anthony Broxton in UnHerd: through Tony Blair and David Cameron. “It is little wonder that scepticism to opposition poll-leads runs deep within the national psyche.”

China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier. Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty

It’s often said that America’s $800bn defence budget is larger than those of the next 10 countries combined, says Foreign Policy. But that’s probably not true. The US government privately estimates that China spends the equivalent of $700bn a year on defence, not the $300bn or so often cited. And that money goes a lot further in China than it does in the US, because wages and other costs are so much lower there.

Young people are turning to private healthcare in record numbers, says Tortoise. A whopping 41% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they have used private doctors, according to a poll by the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, compared to only 6% of over-65s. Fears about long delays and shoddy services mean young people are willing to forgo socialising, holidays and new clothes to pay for healthcare.

They’re Nike’s controversial new trainers, which Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum wore to run the Chicago marathon on Sunday in a world record 2hr 0min 35sec. The fancy footwear, which isn’t yet on general sale, is the latest salvo in the battle of the athletics “super shoes”, says The Daily Telegraph: two weeks ago, Ethiopian runner Tigist Assefa set a new women’s marathon record wearing a pair of Adidas’s £400, single-use Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1. Super shoes hold their shape thanks to a stiff plate or rods – usually made of carbon – embedded in a curved sole, which helps “propel the runner forward”.

“How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young – or slender.”

American philosopher William James

That’s it. You’re done.

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