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8 November, 2023

Met Police chief Mark Rowley has rejected calls to ban a pro-Palestine march in London on Armistice Day, saying there is insufficient evidence that the demonstration would risk “serious public disorder”. Labour frontbencher Imran Hussain has resigned over Keir Starmer’s refusal to support a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Reaction in Westminster to the King’s Speech yesterday ranges from “kind of muted to quietly scathing”, says Politico. The Daily Mail describes many of the proposals – such as a crackdown on London’s rickshaws – as “either insubstantial, trivial or narrowly technocratic”. The Euclid telescope, which is aiming to create the largest cosmic 3D map ever made, has beamed back its first images. They include the Horsehead Nebula; a spiral galaxy; and the Perseus Cluster, a gathering of over 100,000 galaxies in one frame. 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Trump wants victory – but he also wants revenge

We’re a year away from the 2024 presidential election, says Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post, and the omens are “bone-chilling”. A recent poll has put Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden by four percentage points in five out of six “battleground” states. Sure, circumstances can change in 12 months, but “given the razor-thin closeness of the 2020 election, this is a hair-on-fire situation”. Then there are Trump’s plans for his return to the White House. Merely winning isn’t enough. “He wants revenge.” The former president and his allies are reportedly planning to use the federal government to “punish” critics and opponents with legal investigations, including the retired army chief Mark Milley.

Trump has been upfront about all this – he considers it “justified tit-for-tat retaliation” for his own legal woes, which he claims are politically motivated. “This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump told New Hampshire voters last month. “And that means I can do that, too.” When he was president, his efforts to “misuse the levers of government” were stymied by officials who refused to cross certain lines. So next time round, he’ll simply hire “more compliant lawyers” – his team are already compiling lists of suitable candidates. Another troubling plan involves deploying the Insurrection Act, which empowers the president to use the military domestically, on demonstrators. It’s hard to know whether officers would refuse to carry out such an order. There’s a less-than-small chance we’ll find out.

Chris Gorman/Getty 

Scottish rail bosses are looking for trainee drivers for one of the world’s most scenic train routes, says the BBC. ScotRail says new hires would be based in Fort William, and regularly travel the West Highland Line – famous for featuring the Glenfinnan Viaduct that appeared in the Harry Potter films. The route also includes Corrour, the UK’s highest (1,339ft above sea level) and most remote station, which appeared in 1996’s Trainspotting. No previous experience is required, but the successful candidate must be at least 20. Apply here.

The figures behind the so-called “youthquake” in Africa are truly astonishing, says The New York Times. While birthrates are “tumbling” in richer nations, Africa’s population is expected to double over the next quarter-century, to 2.5 billion. In 1950, Africans made up 8% of humanity; by 2050, it’ll be 25% – including a third of all 15 to 24-year-olds.

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“Sorry, city boys!” says Vogue. The padded gilets so beloved by bankers have now been “co-opted by the fashion crowd”. Sleeveless puffer jackets were all over the front row this fashion week, and if you take a walk around central London right now you can expect to pass “at least half a dozen stylish, gilet-clad individuals”, who also look toasty warm. “Who said fashion and practicality had to be mutually exclusive?”

“Hello Elon, any jobs going?” Kirsty Wigglesworth/Getty

Even Rishi knows his goose is cooked

“Rishi Sunak appears to have given up,” says Alice Thomson in The Times. After he met ministers for informal drinks on Monday, one said: “It felt like he’d already checked out, his wheelie was at the door and he was pottering around for his final hours, looking forward to a few foreign sightseeing trips.” Where once the prime minister was tetchy when asked about his wife’s finances, “he now sounds resigned”; when he was asked this week about yet another Tory MP accused of rape, he almost shrugged. Yes, Sunak agreed, these were “very serious” allegations. Now, says a Conservative backbencher, “we call him Sunk”.

At the Tory party conference last month, it felt like he still thought he had a chance to sell himself as the “change candidate”. But the King’s Speech yesterday contained fewer government bills than any parliamentary opening in a decade. There was nothing to suggest a “brighter future”, as Sunak weakly suggested; no plans for the NHS or housebuilding or social care. Nothing on immigration, nothing on nature. It’s as if he doesn’t expect to be around to deal with any of these vital matters. If you want to know where Sunak’s mind is, just look at the AI conference he hosted last week at Bletchley Park. Interviewing Elon Musk, the PM was at his most “relaxed and expansive”. His role model now appears to be deputy-PM-turned-Meta-executive Nick Clegg: get eviscerated in the polls and start again with the West Coast tech bros.

After more than 30 years of The Simpsons, Homer has stopped strangling his son Bart when he gets angry. Though the long-running gag was quietly axed in series 31, before the pandemic, it was only acknowledged on-screen in a recent episode in which Homer says: “Times have changed.” My own young children were distraught about it, says Stuart Heritage in The Guardian, but I explained that a father strangling his son may not be the best TV trope. “They suggested that Homer could punch Bart instead, or maybe throw him around a bit.”

Last week, Israel used its Arrow missile-defence system to shoot down a rocket outside of Earth’s atmosphere – the first combat ever to take place in space. The ballistic missile was launched from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, and flew almost 1,000 miles over the Arabian peninsula towards the Israeli port city of Eilat. Who would have thought, says Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew on X (formerly Twitter), that Yemenis would be involved in the world’s first “space combat”? 

They’re Nike’s new £45 trainers for babies learning to walk. The footwear company claims its Swoosh 1 shoes “help support our earliest walkers as they take their first steps”. But podiatrists say infants are better off learning to walk barefoot or in socks, so they can feel the ground beneath their feet. Shoes “can offer protection”, Rob Payne, from the London Podiatry Centre, tells The Daily Telegraph, “but introducing them too early may potentially hinder a baby’s gait development”. 👟😵

“The colonised person is a persecuted person who constantly dreams of becoming the persecutor.”

Philosopher Frantz Fanon

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