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16 November, 2023

Keir Starmer suffered the biggest rebellion of his leadership last night, when 56 Labour MPs backed a parliamentary motion calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict rather than abstaining from the vote. Ten frontbenchers resigned over the issue, including former leadership contender Jess Phillips. She said she was voting “with my constituents, my head, and my heart”. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in San Francisco yesterday. The two leaders agreed to resume military-to-military communications and tackle the trafficking of the opioid fentanyl, but Xi told Biden he should “stop arming” Taiwan and that China’s reunification with the island was “unstoppable”. Millions of women in England will be able to get the contraceptive pill for free without seeing a GP, says The Times. In a “revolutionary” change announced by the NHS, pharmacists will be able to prescribe the drugs over the counter from next month.

Aayan Hirsi Ali at the launch of one of her books in Berlin in 2015. Christian Marquardt/Getty

Why I ditched atheism for Christianity

I was a teenager when the Muslim Brotherhood arrived in my community in Nairobi in 1985, says Ayaan Hirsi Ali in UnHerd, and supercharged our approach to Islam. “As girls we donned the burka and swore off Western fashion and make-up. The boys cultivated their facial hair.” We ditched unbelieving friends and “cursed the Jews multiple times a day”. It was all motivated by fear – fear of being “condemned to an eternal life in hellfire”. This idea, that fear is at the heart of religion, is the subject of Bertrand Russell’s 1927 lecture, Why I am Not a Christian. When I came across the transcript in 2002 it gave me the courage to escape “an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people”, and become an atheist. I found a new circle of friends, people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, who were clever and fun – the opposite of Muslim Brotherhood preachers.

But now, 20 years on, I call myself a Christian. As Tom Holland argues in his 2019 book Dominion, all sorts of ideas and institutions, from the nation state to the rule of law, “find their roots in Christianity”. The threats from China, Russia and radical Islamism to hard-won Western freedoms can’t be fended off with secular tools alone. Because atheism fails to answer the fundamental questions: What is it that unites us? What is the meaning and purpose of life? The “God hole” left by the retreat of the church has ended up being filled by “a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma”, like virtue-signalling identity politics and eco-mania. The Muslim Brotherhood taught me “the power of a unifying story”. Unless we offer something just as meaningful, like Christianity, “the erosion of our civilisation will continue”.

Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in The Crown. Netflix

The first four episodes of the final series of The Crown, released today, have received a near-universal thumbs down from critics. A one-star Guardian review called them the “very definition of bad writing” – so bad they’re “basically an out-of-body experience”. A two-star review in The  Daily Telegraph said the programme had hit a “dead end”, and that it was haunted by Princess Diana’s “bizarre” ghost. Even a relatively benign four-star write-up in The Times struggled with the appearance of the Spencer spectre, describing it as “peculiarly self-defeating”.

There is something oddly enduring about the belief that “if you think it, it will come”, says The Guardian. In the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale called it “positive thinking”. In the noughties, Oprah called it “manifesting”. And earlier this year, TikTokers dubbed it “lucky girl syndrome”. Now it has another name: “delulu”, short for delusional. The hashtag #delulu has racked up more than 4.5 billion views on TikTok, based on a simple idea: “Set unrealistic expectations for yourself and earnestly believe you will achieve them.” Whether your goals are to do with love, work, health, whatever, “delulu is the solulu”.

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Will Ferrell in Elf (2003): high marks for “holiday cheer”

If festive films are your favourite part of Christmas, we have the “dream job” for you, says American website CableTV: “Chief of Cheer”. The successful applicant will be paid $2,500 to watch 25 Christmas movies in 25 days and rank them in categories including “nostalgia”, “heartwarming storytelling” and “holiday cheer”. If this jingles your bells, and you’re a US resident, apply here.

Matthew McConaughey and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Dysfunctional politics, but rich as hell

America is the land of “dysfunctional politics”, says Adrian Wooldridge in Bloomberg. Republicans and Democrats are barely on speaking terms; three-quarters of voters think the country is heading in the wrong direction. “Yet in one vital area, the US has lost none of its elan.” By almost every measure, its economy is “storming ahead”. In 1990, the country accounted for 40% of the nominal GDP of the G7. Today, it’s 58%. It has a higher GDP per capita than every EU country bar Luxembourg and Ireland, and the Irish figures are distorted by tax-avoiding US companies channelling their profits there. America’s stock market has “massively outperformed” its peers: $100 invested in the S&P 500 in 1990 would be worth $2,300 today, compared to just $510 had it gone into other rich-world stocks.

The US is not only leading the way in old industries – it’s “the world’s largest producer of oil and gas” – it’s also way ahead of its Western rivals in the industries of the future, from AI to cloud storage to driverless cars. And the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, used in almost 90% of global foreign exchange transactions. The big worry is that the “bull elephant goes rogue” – that the combination of America’s dysfunctional politics and its economic pre-eminence leads to decisions that weaken the liberal world order. “If the mighty US economy provided a platform for the Wise Men to steer the world after 1945, today’s still mighty US economy may well provide a platform for the Wild Men to plunge it into chaos.”

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Spencer Platt/Getty

A single stamp that once cost 24 cents has just sold for more than $2m, says The New York Times. The “Inverted Jenny”, which depicts a biplane called the Curtiss JN, was issued by the US Post Office in 1918, but one batch was accidentally printed with the picture upside down. A canny clerk bought the only 100 stamps released publicly for $24, and later sold them for $15,000. Individual ones have since been sold to collectors, initially for hundreds, then thousands, then into seven figures, before hitting the new record last week.

“Can someone turn up the Mozart?” Getty

Posh poultry owners looking for someone to watch their chickens while they’re away are increasingly checking the birds into “hen hotels”, says The Daily Telegraph. “Hennels”, which have boomed because of the post-pandemic rise in chicken ownership, offer luxury boarding services complete with classical music, fresh fruit and veg, and room to roam. For the paltry sum of £3 a day, fancy fowls checking into Hen Weekend are given soft bedding, soothing music and unlimited access to a Wendy house, while for £5 a night guests at Marlow Poultry enjoy “eco” coops made from sustainable materials.

It’s Louis Vuitton’s $1m handbag, says Highsnobiety. The brainchild of new men’s creative director Pharrell Williams, the Millionaire Speedy bag is an ultra-luxe version of the Pharrell Speedy. It’s made to order from crocodile leather, comes with a solid gold chain and added diamonds, and is available in five colours. But even if you do have seven figures to spend, don’t get your hopes up. The pricey purse, like the original Speedy, appears to be available only to “top-tier” clientele.

“Life is like a trumpet. If you don’t put anything into it, you don’t get anything out.”

American musician WC Handy

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