16 October, 2023

In the headlines

A million Palestinians are believed to have fled southwards from northern Gaza ahead of an anticipated offensive by Israeli forces. Both Israel and Hamas have denied reports of a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid in from Egypt, where the Rafah border crossing remains closed. Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party is on course to be ousted after eight years in power. The populist ruling party won the most seats, but the centrist Civic Coalition, led by former prime minister and European Council president Donald Tusk, has a better chance of forming a coalition. A group of sumo wrestlers flying to a sports festival had to be transferred to a different plane because they weighed too much to take off. Japan Airlines laid on an emergency extra flight to spread the load of the 27 sumo rikishi, who weigh an average of nearly 19 stone.

Comment

The “Axis of Ill Will”: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, and Kim Jong-un

The growing danger of re-running the 1930s

Nothing frightens Joe Biden more than the thought that he might “inadvertently stumble” into World War Three, says Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Times. But despite America’s increasing reluctance to get bogged down abroad, he should remember: it was “appeasement and the failure of deterrence” that led the West into World War Two. And as former US defence secretary Robert Gates wrote shortly before the recent attack on Israel, America today faces “graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever”. Never before, he said, has Washington faced “four allied antagonists at the same time – Russia, China, North Korea and Iran – whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own”.

It has been clear for several years that the US is already in a new Cold War, this time with China. And the war in Ukraine has revealed a deep ideological divide between the countries of the “Rimland” (the Anglosphere, western Europe and Japan) and those of the Eurasian “Heartland” (China, Russia and Iran, plus North Korea). The crisis in Israel may be just the latest in a “cascade of conflict” that has the potential to escalate to the global war Biden fears, especially if China seizes the moment to impose a blockade on Taiwan. Whether we slide into war depends on two things: the extent of collusion between the new “Axis of Ill Will”, and the extent of American resolve. “There are reasons to fear that the former will be considerable, and the latter will not.” I’ve long argued that we risk “re-running the 1970s”. Now I increasingly fear “we may be re-running the 1930s”.

Art

This Friday more than 100 old Tube posters will go on display at the London Transport Museum, including an iconic space-themed graphic by the surrealist Man Ray. The visionary behind the advertising campaign, Frank Pick, took charge of publicity for the Underground in 1908 and revolutionised poster ads, which had previously been text-based. Pick commissioned eye-catching work by futurists, cubists, dadaists and more, pushing the message that the theatre, the zoo and the countryside were all within easy reach.

Inside politics

Getty

Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, is obsessed with making the perfect roast potatoes, says The Sunday Telegraph. He once took a whole week off work to determine the perfect spud, cooking two different varieties each day, and apparently one way to gee him up for a big interview is to whisper in his ear: “Your roast potatoes are shit.” His recipe: boil Maris Pipers for 14 minutes in salted water, then roast for 50 minutes at 190C, “turning them exactly twice”.

Love etc

“Fancy a go in the closet tonight?” Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty

Jada Pinkett Smith made headlines last week with the revelation that she had been separated from her husband Will Smith since 2016. Almost as “jaw-dropping”, says Hadley Freedman in The Sunday Times, is that the couple’s children, Jaden and Willow, slept in their bed until they were six and four. What effect did that have on their sex life? “We had a love nest in our closet,” the 52-year-old actress explains. “This beautiful blue dome with twinkle lights in the ceiling with a circular mattress bed. We built that house, so I created that nest knowing [we’d need it], and we would sneak into the love nest at night-time. So trust me, I had that handled.”

Comment

Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964): “Come on children, do your bit for the NHS.”

The reinvention of the new nanny state

It’s been almost 60 years since the phrase “nanny state” entered the vernacular, says Bagehot in The Economist. Its inventor, the former Conservative minister Iain Macleod, was furious about the introduction of 70mph speed limits on England’s motorways. Following that logic, he argued, we might as well “go back to where we started with a 5mph limit and the man with the red flag”. Well, Macleod would not have enjoyed this year’s party conference season. Rishi Sunak wants to make it illegal for anyone born after 2009 to buy tobacco; Labour is hoping to crack down on vaping, outlaw junk-food advertising, and make sure three- to five-year-olds have tooth-brushing lessons. “Nanny has been busy.”

Yet the nature of the nanny state has changed. It used to be “paternalistic”, a means of protecting people from themselves. Today it’s all about “protecting the state from the people”. Sunak argues that smokers “heap pressure on the NHS”; Labour warns that tooth decay lands people in hospital. In fairness, voters expect far more from the state than they used to: free childcare; help with social care costs for the elderly; energy subsidies when gas prices shoot up. And the more public services the state provides, the more the government will intrude into the lives of voters “to keep a lid on the cost”. Ministers know they won’t encounter that much opposition – after Covid lockdowns, “even sweeping measures seem small bore”. In the new nanny state, “everyone is a public servant”.

Noted

The only British overseas territory without the Union Jack on its flag is Gibraltar. Instead, says International Intrigue, it has a red castle to reflect the outpost’s “legendary fortifications”, and a dangling key to symbolise its strategic significance as the British “key to the Mediterranean” and the Moorish “key to Spain”.

Letters

To the Church Times:

Patrick Kidd of The Times is quoted congratulating “the third Bishop Bishop”, later referring to the former Lord Chief Justice, Judge Judge. Many years ago, a friend told me of having had a parish priest whose surname was Fathers. In church, one Sunday morning, an elderly stranger, also a priest, had introduced himself to the congregation as “Fr Fathers, Fr Fathers’s Father”.

Allan Wilcox, Gwynedd

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It’s an annular solar eclipse, a rare display in which the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun, which was visible along a narrow strip of the US on Saturday. Nasa livestreamed the event from Albuquerque, New Mexico where organisers handed out 80,000 pairs of tinted safety specs. “We’re in annularity,” declared space agency sun boffin Michael Kirk, referring to the moment when the moon is fully in front of the sun, creating the fleeting ring of fire seen above. “It is a gorgeous sight to behold.”