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1 December, 2023

Israel has resumed airstrikes on Gaza after the seven-day ceasefire came to an end this morning without being extended any further. Both sides blame each other for violating the truce: Israel says Hamas fired rockets across the border and failed to release all female and child hostages; Hamas says Israel blocked the supply of fuel to northern Gaza. COP28 delegates have agreed to launch the long-awaited “loss and damage” fund to help developing nations deal with the effects of climate change, says the FT. The EU, the UK, the US, the UAE, Japan and Germany have pledged more than $420m to the “historic” project, which was first announced at last year’s conference. The South East of England has had its earliest winter snowfall in 15 years. Snow and ice alerts remain in force across much of the UK, with temperatures as low as -10C forecast in parts of the North East. 

Alistair Darling with his wife Maggie in 2010, before delivering his final budget as chancellor. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

The man who saved Britain twice

Alistair Darling, who died yesterday aged 70, “not only saved the country”, says Stephen Daisley in The Spectator, “he saved it twice”. The first occasion was during his time as chancellor, which was “monopolised by the global financial crisis”. Of course, the Labour government got a lot wrong in its response, but what it got right – propping up the UK financial sector after Wall Street went into meltdown – was thanks to Darling. Under his economic stewardship, “a catastrophe was managed down to a crisis” and the country was spared the “fiscal brutality” later seen in Spain, Portugal, Italy and elsewhere. And he did all this while being briefed against by No 10, “obsessed as No 10 always is by power and positioning”.

His second major service to the country came during the referendum on Scottish independence. Darling led the cross-party “Better Together” campaign, urging Scots to vote “no” to leaving the UK. Many in Labour hated Darling for making them work with Tories, but he understood that a divided campaign stood little chance. He put country before party, in “an act of supreme patriotism”. His real triumph came during the first televised debate, against Alex Salmond – “one of the liveliest political performers Scotland has produced”. Darling turned his “bank manager” reputation to his advantage, hammering Salmond’s case for independence as “risky, poorly thought through and driven by one man’s ego”. At the end, beaten and ashen-faced, Salmond was “bundled away by his advisors”. Darling had somehow steered the campaign through Labour squabbling, Tory unpopularity and Downing Street blunders to save the union. He was a “humble, dignified man”. In death he is due the recognition he never asked for in life.

🧑‍🌾🥸 Darling was always unassuming, Sky’s Sophy Ridge says on X (formerly Twitter). He once told me that, while doing some gardening at home, a newspaper reporter appeared. Thinking he was just the gardener, the journalist asked him if he knew where Alistair Darling was. “Sorry,” he replied, “I’ve no idea.”

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The Atlantic has compiled a collection of striking pictures of solar power stations around the world, including a circular array inside a disused satellite dish in Switzerland; an undulating sheet of panels covering hillsides in China’s Fujian province; a bird’s eye view of a “concentrated solar” plant in Chile’s Atacama Desert, which uses 10,600 mirrors to reflect sunlight to the top of a 250m tower; a similar operation with 50,000 mirrors in Israel’s Negev Desert; and a newly built floating solar plant on a reservoir in Indonesia. See the rest here.

America’s classified information system is a total mess, says Sam Lebovic in Foreign Policy. By one 2001 estimate, the US government has around 7.5 billion pages of restricted material – more than the number of pages in all the books in the Library of Congress. And efforts to stop leaks can be farcical. When the name of the US naval intelligence chief surfaced during a corruption investigation in 2013, he had his clearance suspended. He was never charged, but the case remained open for three years – during which he “wasn’t able to read, see or hear any classified information”. Colleagues had to hide all restricted material “every time he entered the room”.

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Moët & Chandon is at risk of losing its crown as the world’s biggest wine brand to a Chinese challenger, says The Daily Telegraph. Changyu Pioneer Wine Company saw its value rise by a third between 2022 and 2023, to $1.2bn, while Moët’s fell 10% to $1.3bn. Founded in 1892, Changyu is China’s oldest winemaker, and has more than 20,000 hectares of vineyards across the country. The Changyu Moser Family cabernet sauvignon is available at Selfridges for £41.99 a bottle – click here to order.

Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni and Geert Wilders. Getty

Europe’s populists are nothing like Trump

Hard as this may be for some liberals to accept, says Janan Ganesh in the FT, Britain is now a “relative haven from populism”. The next general election will result in either a centre-right government or a centre-left one. By comparison, potential new leaders elsewhere include Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. The Italian far right is already in power; their German equivalents could well “break through” in the 2025 elections. As bad as Britain is at, say, high-speed rail, “I’d rather take my chances here than in many western democracies over the coming years”.

But there’s a big difference between American populism and European populism. In the US, it’s a “personality cult”. Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis have tried to offer Republican voters an alternative form of Trumpism. “Both have flopped.” If Donald Trump suddenly reversed course on China or immigration, would many of his supporters abandon him? Probably not. In Europe, it’s a different story. Le Pen can’t shift even slightly on foreign affairs or social issues “without risking a split on the right”; Italy’s Giorgia Meloni supports Ukraine against Russia “at her daily peril”. Ultimately, European populism is “about something”: mistrust of the EU, hostility to immigration, a rejection of modern gender and race norms. “American populism is, to an amazing extent, about someone.” And whereas the factors fuelling populism in Europe aren’t going anywhere, “Trump will one day be gone”.

A good, honest snog in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

The pandemic put one hell of a dampener on smooching, says Olivia Blair in Elle, but kissing is back, “in all its sloppy glory”. Celebrities like Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly have revived the “steamy public snog”, while the “consistently ahead-of-the-curve” designer Jacquemus devoted his SS21 L’Amour campaign to models making out – “in bed, on the floor, against the wall, on push bikes and motorbikes”. Is it just a fleeting “horniness-fuelled” trend? “Only time will tell.” 

Like many pub and restaurant chains, Wetherspoons has an app through which you can order food and drink. But unlike most others, it doesn’t use GPS to verify you’re at a particular branch – meaning you can place an order for any table at any branch across the country. On the “Wetherspoons The Game!!” Facebook group, which has 160,000 members, people post their pub name and table number for strangers to order to. “The game is ultimate karma,” says The Guardian: “a giant round where if someone gets yours in now, you owe someone else in the future.”

It’s an anglerfish swimming upside down. Marine biologists thought the luminescent lurkers adopted this position only when hunting, says Phys.org, but they have now discovered that some deep-sea species spend their entire lives on their back. They appear to have evolved the behaviour to make better use of their natural lures, the long stringy bits that hang from their faces to attract prey. 🐟🙃

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Groucho Marx

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