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14 November, 2023

David Cameron returned to the Cabinet table “for the first time in 2,681 days” this morning, says Politico, as yesterday’s reshuffle was “interpreted by MPs and hacks alike as a major shift by Rishi Sunak towards the centre”. The Daily Mail claims Suella Braverman’s sacking could ignite a “civil war” within the party, and former minister Andrea Jenkyns has already filed a letter of no-confidence in the PM. Iceland is bracing itself for a major volcanic eruption, after around 900 earthquakes were detected in the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula. Thousands of residents have been evacuated from the town of Grindavik, where a 10-mile-long fissure has opened up. The tiny Caribbean island of Dominica is creating the world’s first marine protected area for sperm whales. Officials say the 300 sq mile reserve will be used by around 35 whale families as nursing and feeding grounds. 🐳🥰

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Sunak’s reshuffle gamble

Though David Cameron had the makings of an excellent prime minister – intelligence, diligence, “a quick wit and a smooth manner” – he ended up being “one of the worst”, says Bagehot in The Economist. The Brexit referendum he called trashed the country’s 500-year-old strategy of ensuring Europe did not unite against Britain. He invited Chinese firms to invest in crucial infrastructure like telecoms and nuclear power stations, and “promised the impossible on immigration”. The “radical experiment” of austerity largely failed: the size of the state was not sustainably reduced, but we were left with “decrepit schools and hospitals”. In truth, Cameron’s philosophy of fiscal conservatism combined with social liberalism “was never a popular vision”. He only scraped one majority, in 2015. “There are not many Cameroons in Britain. Outside some newspaper op-ed pages, there never were.”

I was Cameron’s foreign secretary, says William Hague in The Times, and I’m “very pleased he will now be sitting in my old chair”. Whereas Boris Johnson’s government was “conducted in a vile, tense atmosphere, dominated by foul-mouthed, incompetent advisers”, Cameron’s was “rational and respectful” – and he should bring some of that ethos to Sunak’s team. Cameron’s oft-overlooked achievement was “to give the Conservative Party a much broader base”. Great strides were made in making sure a fiscally conservative party was also “socially liberal and internationalist”: advancing the careers of women, championing same-sex marriage, and becoming “the natural home of ethnically diverse British leadership” – of whom Sunak himself “is the outstanding embodiment”.

💣🌳 Cameron’s appointment is the latest evidence that Sunak, far from being “Captain Sensible”, has a tendency to take “huge if calculated gambles”, says Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph. He defied his party leader to back Brexit during the referendum, and “risked a massive revolt by the green blob” by rolling back some of the country’s net zero commitments. By bringing Cameron “in from the cold”, he now threatens to unleash the fury of the Tory right.

Frumpy fashion is in, says Hannah Bertolino in Dazed. In contrast to the “glow-up” plots you get in films – where the nerdy girl has a makeover that reveals she was actually beautiful all along – stars are posting Instagram pictures of them effectively doing the opposite. Supermodel Bella Hadid has her librarian glasses and grandma skirt; Iris Law (Jude’s daughter) has accessorised puffy sports shorts with long-hanging rat-tails; and Gen Z It-girl Emma Chamberlain was spotted tucking up a baggy Maison Margiela bodysuit into fishnet tights. We’ve entered an era of “ugly dressing”.  

One of the “most daunting challenges” for Israeli forces in Gaza is Hamas’s labyrinth of underground tunnels, says The New York Times. One technique they use is known as “purple hair”: soldiers drop coloured smoke grenades into the tunnels, then watch for the purple plumes drifting out of any nearby houses – a telltale sign that the property has a tunnel entrance, and needs securing. Other methods are less subtle. When Egypt was trying to destroy Hamas tunnels along its border a decade ago, it dumped sewage into some of them and levelled houses that concealed entrances.

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Suella Braverman’s comments about the pro-Palestinian marches last week showed why she had to go, says Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. It “may not have been factually incorrect” to say that the police were taking too soft an approach. But branding demonstrators “hate marchers” raised the temperature at a time when it needed to be lowered. Now there is talk of her “becoming the heroine of the Tory right”. This would be “profoundly misjudged”. Being on the right should be about free markets and small government, not calling homelessness a “lifestyle choice” and sounding like Marie Antoinette. Adopting Braverman as a standard bearer would put the faction out of touch with much of the British electorate. 

A protester at Sunday’s march. Telmo Pinto/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty

Has Le Pen detoxified the French far-right?

The mass demonstration against anti-Semitism in Paris on Sunday was meant to be an “apolitical” moment of national unity, says Solenn de Royer in Le Monde. Instead, the march will likely be remembered as a “before-and-after moment” for the far-right National Rally. In an obvious attempt to break away from the party’s anti-Semitic past, its MPs turned out in large numbers, including leader Marine Le Pen. Some commentators claim that their “symbolic relegation to the back of the procession” was a sign that National Rally remains “toxic”. But that’s wishful thinking. The party has become so mainstream now that several political figures, including former president Nicolas Sarkozy, endorsed its presence “without batting an eyelid”. Le Pen “couldn’t have asked for more”.

Equally striking was the absence of Emmanuel Macron, who said he would join the march “in heart and in spirit” instead. Even the president’s staunchest supporters don’t understand his decision to stay away. He said he never takes part in such demonstrations, but his attitude is in stark contrast to that of his predecessors, François Mitterrand and François Hollande, who joined similar protests after a Jewish cemetery was desecrated by neo-Nazis in 1990 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015. The fight against anti-Semitism is “not a divisive issue, but one of concord”. For a president who regularly calls for “national unity”, to skip the march was a missed opportunity. In France, we have a saying: Les absents ont toujours tort. “The absent are always wrong.”

This video of Hot Wheels toy cars zooming down an empty waterslide has been watched nearly two million times on YouTube. “I wish this was a life-sized ride at a theme park,” says one viewer. It “made me feel like a kid again”. Watch the full clip here.

The world’s largest bank was forced to complete trades in US government debt via USB stick last Thursday, after being hit by a cyberattack. The American division of the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China is believed to have been targeted by Lockbit, says Bloomberg, “a prolific criminal gang with ties to Russia”. The bank’s “stricken systems” were taken offline to stop the attack spreading, so a messenger had to race around Manhattan carrying deal data on a thumb drive.

It’s the largest musical instrument in the world, says NPR: “the Great Stalacpipe Organ”. Located deep inside the Luray Caverns in Virginia, it consists of a keyboard rigged up via “miles of cables” to tiny electric hammers that strike stalactites around the caves, causing vibrations that give off musical notes. The soft tap of these mallets creates “bewitching, almost otherworldly melodies that linger, reverberating in the still, damp air”.

“A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”

Kurt Vonnegut

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