The week UK 02 07 English magazine

“But there could be benefits, forboth sides, in avoiding too hasty and brutal an ending.” David Cameron and fellow EU leaders held tense talks this week in an effort to contain the fallo

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THE WEEK

THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

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The scientist who solved a million crimes

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THE WEEK 2 July 2016

The main story…

lonelier and uglier” And the worst part, saidGabriel Roth on Slate, is that Brexit –assuming it happens, and there are those whothink it won’t – may not even deliver adecrease in immigration No wonder manyLeave voters are now said to be sufferingfrom a bad case of “buyer’s remorse”

I confess to having felt a tweak of guilt myselfafter the result, said Rod Liddle in TheSunday Times Had I let my fellow Europeansdown by voting Leave? Was Britain nowgoing to “cop it”? But the petulant reaction

of Remain supporters and Jean-ClaudeJuncker, the unelected president of theEuropean Commission – who warned thatBrexit would not be “an amicable divorce” –restored my faith in my decision The fact is,most Britons feel uncomfortable with thepace of immigration, they “quite like thenation state”, and they feel the elite has ignored their concerns.Untangling ourselves from the EU will be tricky, said TheDaily Telegraph, but critics are wrong to claim it’s bound toleave us worse off “There is no earthly reason why a countrysevering a political relationship that was already pretty half-hearted shouldn’t flourish, unless we talk ourselves into a crisis

or one is foisted on us.” There’s no call for panic, agreed RossClark in The Spectator In the end, we will get an acceptabletrade deal with the EU “because it will be in everyone’s

interests that it should happen”

It was telling that share prices fellfurther on the main German andFrench indices last week than they did

on the FTSE: it suggested investorsbelieve those country’s exports wouldcome off worse in the event of a “hostile divorce”

My guess is that Brexit’s impact will be “neutral to moderatelynegative” for the UK, said Wolfgang Münchau in the FT But

I fear it could be “devastating” for the EU, where anti-Brusselssentiment is on the rise In October, Italy is holding a crucialreferendum on constitutional reforms: Prime Minister MatteoRenzi has promised to resign if he loses – and there’s a goodchance he will The party most likely to benefit is the populistFive Star Movement, which wants to hold a referendum on

EU membership That’s all the more reason to avoid anyprecipitate action over last week’s vote, said Martin Wolf inthe same paper The UK should hold off from triggeringArticle 50, which would “eliminate its leverage” and set theclock running on Brexit We need to work out exactly what

we want, and the EU needs to reflect on its position too The

“stalemate” can’t last forever “But there could be benefits, forboth sides, in avoiding too hasty and brutal an ending.”

David Cameron and fellow EU leaders held

tense talks this week in an effort to contain the

fallout from last Thursday’s historic Brexit

vote The referendum result – a 52% to 48%

victory for the Leave side – caught almost

everyone by surprise, unleashing political and

economic chaos It led Cameron to announce

that he would resign as prime minister in the

autumn, and prompted a concerted move by

Labour MPs to unseat their own leader,

Jeremy Corbyn (see opposite) The financial

markets swung wildly – with sterling at one

point plunging to a 31-year low against the

dollar, and some share trading having to be

temporarily halted Three credit-rating

agencies downgraded the UK’s debt

As Remainers vented their fury and

disappointment, anti-EU parties on the

continent rejoiced at the UK vote and vowed

to push for referendums of their own

Fearful of prolonged uncertainty, EU leaders urged Britain to

instigate formal exit negotiations “Married or divorced, but

not something in between,” said Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s

PM “We are not on Facebook, with ‘it’s complicated’ as a

status.” But Cameron insisted the UK wouldn’t invoke Article

50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the official two-year notice to quit the

Union, until a new government was in place (see page 6) He

said EU leaders had failed to grasp public concerns over mass

immigration, and warned that they

would have to show some flexibility

on freedom-of-movement rules if they

wanted a future deal with Britain over

the single market Lib Dem leader

Tim Farron said his party would

continue fighting for the UK to remain in the EU, while Angus

Robertson, the SNP’s leader in Westminster, said his party

“had no intention whatsoever of seeing Scotland taken out

of Europe” (see page 21).

“How quickly the unthinkable became the irreversible,” said

The Economist A year ago, few people imagined that Britons,

for all their fondness for whingeing about the EU, would

actually vote to leave “the club of countries that buy nearly

half of Britain’s exports” Yet here we are The steep fall in the

pound last week “offered a taste of what is to come” Brexit

will leave the country with a “permanently less vibrant

economy”, resulting in fewer jobs and more austerity In the

long term, said The Observer, it’s possible that Brexit may

bring some benefits, but for now the referendum result has

pitched us into a world of “uncertainty and instability” The

country “looks destined, unless we are both extremely vigilant

and extremely lucky, to become by stages poorer, weaker,

Brexit: the vote that shook the world

It wasn’t all bad

A businessman with terminal

cancer was so impressed by the

treatment he received from the

doctors and nurses at Poole

Hospital that he left them £10m

in his will Before his death last

year, Robert White arranged to

sell his £6.5m collection of cars

and motorcycles to pay for a

state-of-the-art cancer wing at

the hospital; a further £3.5m will

come from the sale of other

assets The money will also help

fund new radiotherapy facilities

at Dorset County Hospital

Across the country, people areresponding to a rise in hatecrimes since the Brexit vote bytaking positive steps to showimmigrants that they arewelcome A Polish communitycentre in west London that waspainted with graffiti has beeninundated with flowers andmessages of support And inSherborne, Dorset, a b&b owner

is offering free Sunday-nightstays to immigrants from the

EU in July and August: MalcolmHeygate-Browne said it was a

“thank you for their contribution

to the UK”

A multi-talented pet rabbit with an artistic bent has become an internet star When presented with a blank canvas, the Los Angeles-based bunny,

a four-year-old Holland Lop named Bini, will grab a brush

in its mouth, and daub

on paint to create abstract designs in a variety of colours Bini (pictured) also plays pool and basketball – holding a ball in its mouth and dropping it into a net – and was recently seen using a brush to comb its owner’s hair Shai Asor bought Bini in 2012, and began teaching it tricks when he noticed that the rabbit liked to play with balls Bini now has more than 50,000 Facebook followers.

“There could be benefits, for both sides, in avoiding too hasty and

brutal an ending”

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM

Angry Remain supporters

NEWS 5

25 June 2016 THE WEEK

…and how it was covered

Britain is facing the “greatest political upheaval

in its postwar history”, said The Times – and it

desperately needs a “functioning opposition”

Yet the Brexit campaign and its aftermath have

revealed a Labour Party so chaotically led that it

faces “possible extinction” Its leader, Jeremy

Corbyn, has “alienated” both voters in Labour’s

heartlands, and his own MPs This week his

parliamentary colleagues staged a “belated”

revolt, leaving their posts in droves

First to go was shadow foreign secretary Hilary

Benn, said The Daily Telegraph He was sacked

during a confrontation at 1am on Saturday

night, after being accused of plotting a coup Over the

following days, 20 members of the shadow cabinet and

29 junior ministers resigned, their resignations apparently

choreographed, coming almost every hour On Monday,

thousands of Corbyn supporters rallied outside Parliament,

chanting “Jez we can” and waving placards that read, “hands

off our Corbyn” But on Tuesday, Labour MPs passed a

motion of no confidence in their leader, by a crushing 172 to

40 votes The ballot was not binding, however: Corbyn said it

had “no constitutional legitimacy”, and refused to step down

Corbyn has to go, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian

During the Brexit campaign, he barely troubled to hide his

Eurosceptic sympathies At one point, he “all but agreed” that

those troubled by immigration should vote Leave There is

even evidence that his team deliberately sabotaged the cause,

removing “pro-EU lines” from speeches But the referendum

debacle is not his fault, said Dawn Foster in the same

newspaper: it’s Cameron’s Labour MPs “have sought to

overturn the democratic election of Corbyn from day one”

They should be attacking the Tories, and facing

up to the nation’s many problems, not leadingthis “farcical” attempted coup

Yet Corbyn’s failure to get the Labour votebehind Remain was ultimately fatal, said TheIndependent He made “the case for the EUwith all the enthusiasm of a medieval peasantconfessing to witchcraft on pain of torture”.Polls suggest that a third of Labour voters didn’teven know which side the party was on Now81% of Corbyn’s MPs oppose him, said TheGuardian “The question is no longer whether

Mr Corbyn should continue to lead, but whether

he is in fact leading at all.” The party is in utterdisarray, said Michael Wilkinson in The DailyTelegraph The calls for his resignation kept oncoming this week Ed Miliband reluctantly reached theconclusion that Corbyn’s position was “untenable”; partygrandees Margaret Beckett and Tessa Jowell also called forhim to step aside David Cameron used Prime Minister’sQuestions to say: “For heaven’s sake man, go!”

Corbyn’s rivals were expected to launch leadership challengesthis week, with former shadow business secretary AngelaEagle emerging as one front runner, and the party’s deputyleader, Tom Watson, rumoured to be waiting in the wings.But getting rid of Corbyn may not be easy, said GeoffreyWheatcroft on Slate The party’s convoluted election rulesmean that, once a candidate has been endorsed by 20% ofMPs and MEPs (which he might still manage), the final choice

of leader belongs to its rank-and-file members Many of theseare newly joined hard-left activists, and polls suggest that amajority still favour Corbyn Even so, “Jeremy must resign”,said Chris Bryant, a Labour MP, in The Daily Telegraph He

is making himself a “laughing stock” The party itself could

be “destroyed” if he doesn’t stand aside

Labour implodes

Just over 72% of voters participated in the

referendum – 33.6 million people; that

compares to a turnout in the last general

election of 66.1%

By region, turnout was lowest in Scotland

and Northern Ireland, and highest in the

southeast and southwest of England

The vote was divided 52% Leave, 48%

Remain Overall, 17,410,742 people voted

to Leave; 16,141,241 to Remain

In Scotland 62% voted to Remain, on

a turnout of 67% (In 2014’s Scottish

independence referendum, turnout was

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Well, which is it? Do we want a participatory democracy or a quiescent one? Given the endless laments in recent years about the public’s waning involvement in politics, the former is what we always seemed

to desire And last week we got it Seldom has a nation immersed itself so thoroughly in political

argu-ment In homes, offices, shops and pubs, politics was the talking point Voters accustomed to feeling

that their vote made no difference felt that this time, it would In housing estates across the land, in

Stoke-on-Trent – where less than 50% bothered to vote in the last election – turnout was over 65%.

But here’s the rub If citizen involvement is a key virtue of the democratic system, submission to the

majority verdict is another It’s a system aimed at neutralising that most toxic of political emotions, Sore

Loser Syndrome (SLS) And the chances of doing that are far greater if you’re voting for a political party

rather than a political outcome Parties, after all, make a range of obscure promises, so even if your own

party loses you can still hope the winners will enact some of what you want By contrast, a plebiscite

offers voters a stark choice over a single outcome – a fine way of stimulating citizen participation but

a lousy way of suppressing SLS We can see that only too clearly from the reaction of last week’s sore

losers (the Lib Dems among them) who now seek to reverse the majority decision Insanity If they’re

sore at losing, just imagine the hysterical SLS of the majority robbed of victory.

It’s almost a recipe for civil war How very stupid clever people can be.

THE WEEK

Jeremy O’Grady

Corbyn: will he resign?

boroughs of Hackney and Lambeth(21.5% and 21.4%), and Gibraltar (4.1%).Seven of the ten areas with the highestRemain vote were in London

Of the 30 areas with the most elderlypeople, 27 voted to leave Of the 30 withthe fewest graduates, 28 voted to leave.Polls suggest that 75% of voters aged18-24 voted to Remain in the EU;

however, that age group is also believed

to have had the lowest turnout, of 36%

By contrast, Sky Data estimated thatamong 55- to 64-year-olds, turnout was81%, rising to 83% among over-65s

84.6%.) In Northern Ireland, 56% votedRemain, on a turnout of 63% In Wales,52.5% voted to Leave, a turnout of 71.7%

In England, 53.4% voted to Leave, on aturnout of 73% The most Out region wasthe West Midlands (59.3%), followed bythe East Midlands, the Northeast,Yorkshire and the Humber, and the East

The only English region with a majority Invote was London, with 60% for Remain

The area with the highest proportion ofLeave voters was Boston, Lincs, on 75.6%

The areas with the lowest were the London

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The Brexit breakdown: how the UK voted

6 NEWS Politics

Controversy of the week

Boris for PM?

Boris Johnson woke up last Friday morning “having won the

war”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian Against all the

odds, he had achieved a great victory, and emerged as the “heir

presumptive” to the Tory leadership and No 10 “It’s just that

somehow, as he fought his way through booing crowds on his

Islington doorstep before holding an uncharacteristically

subdued press conference, it didn’t really look that way.” He

seemed “as shocked as anyone else by the enormity of what is

happening” Now he stands to inherit “a nation febrile and

divided, teetering on the brink of economic and constitutional

crisis” Johnson certainly doesn’t look like a man with a plan,

said Janan Ganesh in the FT In his Telegraph column on

Monday, he sketched out a model of Brexit which seemed to

include warm ties with Europe and access to its single market,

without paying in money, observing its laws or allowing the free

movement of people “He did not say whether he also intends to bake a pie and put it in the sky.”

Even so, the 52% have spoken – and the Leavers will have to clear up the mess they’ve made

Not necessarily, said Isabel Hardman in The Observer There is plenty of bad blood in the party over

recent events, and the “Anyone But Boris” campaign is up and running Pensions Secretary Stephen

Crabb, a rising star from a Welsh working-class background, and an enthusiastic Remainer, threw

his hat into the ring this week Home Secretary Theresa May is, however, the favoured “ABB”

candidate “She backed Remain, but in a more half-hearted way than even Jeremy Corbyn.” So she

is “perfectly placed to unite the warring Tory tribes”, said Lucy Denyer in The Daily Telegraph We

need “someone steely at the helm” during Brexit negotiations, and she fits the bill May has survived

six years at the notoriously tricky Home Office, where she is renowned for her forensic grasp of

detail and for “getting what she wants” She gives nothing away – David Cameron once spent an

hour trying to get her to say which way she’d vote in the referendum, “but came away still

guessing” True, she can seem cold “But these are serious times: who wants a joker in charge?”

Well, the joker is still the favourite, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times Boris has charisma, a

proven ability to win difficult elections, and support among the party members who will ultimately

choose the leader (after the candidates are whittled down to two by successive rounds of voting

among MPs) He also has the backing of Michael Gove, and possibly of George Osborne But Tory

leadership elections are “famously hard to call”, and other candidates might come to the fore

between now and 9 September, when the new leader will be announced Whoever gets the job, “a

huge bust-up lies ahead”, said Matthew Parris in The Times Only 160 of 650 MPs backed Brexit

So we probably need a new general election, while facing the prospect of economic meltdown, a

Scottish referendum, and splits in both main parties “Our experiment in direct democracy is hurtling

towards our tradition of representative democracy like some giant asteroid towards a moon.”

Gove and Johnson after their victory

Spirit of the age Good week for:

Gender equality,with news that women are, for the first time,being allowed to participate in English Heritage joustingtournaments The organisation has invited two leading femalejousters from the European circuit to join the male “knights”

competing at four English Heritage castles this summer

Justine Greening,who celebrated Gay Pride by coming out

As much of central London was brought to a standstill by lastweek’s march, the International Development Secretary tweeted:

“Today’s a good day to say I’m in a same-sex relationship Icampaigned for Stronger In, but sometimes you’re better off out!”

Greening, 47, is the first openly gay woman to hold cabinet office

Led Zeppelin,who were cleared of stealing the opening bars of

their biggest hit, Stairway to Heaven, from a song called Taurus

by the rock band Spirit A jury in LA concluded that the two songswere not “substantially similar” in their fundamental elements

Bad week for:

The Irish passport office,which fears being swamped byapplications from UK citizens Since the Brexit vote, there hasbeen a surge in Google searches for “getting an Irish passport”,and Ireland’s foreign minister has confirmed a “spike” inapplications Charlie Flanagan warned that this risked puttingundue pressure on the system, and reminded UK citizens that itwill be two years or more before the rights they enjoy as EUcitizens come to an end

Boring but important

Infrastructure projectsSome of Britain’s biggestinfrastructure projects havebeen thrown into doubt bythe EU referendum result.The £18bn project to build anew nuclear power station atHinkley Point, in Somerset,could be cancelled, agovernment adviser onnuclear matters has warned.Paul Dorfman told The Timesthat the devaluation of thepound, and the politicaluncertainty generated byBrexit, would be anathema

to EDF, the French controlled energy company,which was already struggling

state-to find the funds for the

project However, EDF insiststhat it’s still committed tobuilding the new station.There has also been specu-lation that plans to build anew runway at Heathrow orGatwick will be scuppered;

a decision had been expectedthis month, but has nowbeen delayed The HighSpeed 2 railway line (HS2),linking London, the Midlandsand the North ,could also

be affected Already it hasbeen suggested that parts

of the proposed line will

be dropped

Second EU referendumFour million people havesigned a petition calling onthe Government to hold asecond EU referendum Thepetition – proposing that towin a referendum, one sideshould achieve at least 60%

of the vote if the turnout isless than 75% – was set up inlate May by a right-wingBrexit supporter, who at thatpoint feared that Remainwould win by a small margin.Labour MP David Lammyhas endorsed a secondreferendum, while Tony Blairraised it as a possibility;however, most MPs haveinsisted that the result berespected Some 77,000signatures have beenremoved from the petition,

on suspicion that they wereadded fraudulently

The residents of Tunbridge

Wells are outraged A new

supermarket is being

opened in the prosperous

Kent town – and it’s not the

Waitrose locals have long

felt was their due Over the

years, scores have written to

Waitrose, demanding to

know why their town has

been overlooked They were

angry in 2014, when

Sevenoaks got its second

Waitrose; and even angrier

when Edenbridge, 13 miles

away, was awarded one,

although it has a population

of only 8,000 Now, they’ve

been told that a site that

they hoped would become a

Waitrose is to be occupied

instead by budget retailer

Wilko “This is a Royal spa

town and Waitrose is known

as the Queen’s grocers,”

explained one aggrieved

resident, Craig Smart, 43

of crimes including murder and drugtrafficking Federico Cafiero de Raho,Calabria’s chief anti-mafia prosecutor,said it was hugely significant that Fazzalarihad been captured in the ’Ndrangheta’sheartland “Taurianova is a place wherethe clans control every clod of earth,” hesaid – yet “the investigation proceededwithout him hearing a whisper”.

Madrid

Unclear result:Spain’s second election in

six months has produced another hung

parliament: the People’s Party (PP), led by

acting prime minister Mariano Rajoy,

increased its share of the vote, but still won

only 137 seats in parliament – 14 more

than in December, but far fewer than the

176 needed to form a majority The

socialist PSOE – the PP’s traditional

adversary – came second, with 85 seats,

while the upstart left-wing alliance Unidos

Podemos came third, with 71 Rajoy

hoped to make an alliance with the PSOE,

which performed better than expected:

analysts had predicted it would be knocked

into third place by Unidos Podemos

However, the PSOE rejected his coalition

offer Rajoy said the PP would carry on

governing “day by day”, and pointed to

Podemos’s failure to defeat the Socialists as

evidence that his policies were working

Istanbul, Turkey

Dozens killed in airport attack: Three suicide

bombers launched a devastating attack onIstanbul’s Atatürk airport late on Tuesdayevening, spraying bullets around the buildingbefore blowing themselves up At least 41 peoplewere killed, and around 240 were injured Thebombers seem to have travelled in a taxi to theairport, the third-busiest in Europe, with AK-47automatic rifles in their bags According to earlyreports, they opened fire on crowds of passengers inside the international arrivalsterminal, and at its entrance Presumed to have been perpetrated by Islamic State, thesuicide attack was the third targeting tourists in Istanbul this year, and is likely to deal

a crippling blow to Turkey’s already struggling tourist industry

World leaders expressed their outrage and dismay; Charles Michel, the PM ofBelgium – where 32 people were killed in a similar attack on Brussels in March –posted an emotional message of solidarity; Germany’s foreign minister said that “westand by Turkey”; in the US, the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintonsaid the attack “strengthens our resolve to defeat the forces of terrorism and radicaljihadism around the world… [in] cooperation with our allies”, while the RepublicanDonald Trump spoke of “taking steps to protect America”

Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk

Rome

Hospital honoured:Between September

1943 and June 1944, Rome was struck by

an epidemic of the mysterious and deadly

“K syndrome”; as a result, dozens ofpeople had to be quarantined in a wing atthe Fatebenefratelli hospital – closed tooutsiders, and especially to the Germansoldiers then rounding up Rome’s Jews fordeportation In fact, the K syndrome didn’texist; none of the “patients” was ill – andall were Jewish In this way, the doctorswho diagnosed the disease, and the nurseswho went along with the deception, saved

at least 40 lives The hospital, near Rome’sJewish ghetto, was recently recognised bythe International Raoul WallenbergFoundation as a “House of Life” that gaveshelter to the victims of Nazi persecution

Last week, one of the doctors, AdrianoOssicini, 96, attended a ceremony tocelebrate the honour, along with83-year-old Luciana Tedesco, one ofthe hospital’s fictitious patients

Brussels

Unwelcome guest:

UKIP’s NigelFarage was booed

in the EuropeanParliament onTuesday at anemergency session

to discuss the UK’svote to leave the

EU Things startedamicably enoughwith an embracebetween Farage and the Commission pres-

ident, Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured) – but

the mood changed when Farage told MEPs

that they were “in denial” about the failure

of the European ideal, and accused them of

never having had a proper job Several

turned their backs on the UKIP leader, and

Juncker asked him: “Why are you here?”

However, Marine Le Pen, of France’s

National Front, praised Farage, and hailed

Brexit as the start of a “People’s Spring”

Paris

No change on migrants:Suggestions that

the border checks that take place on the

French side of the Channel could be

pushed back to Kent have been rebuffed

by the government in Paris, reports The

Guardian Under the bilateral Le Touquet

accord, signed in 2003, British officials are

authorised to check passports in France,

and vice versa It is as a result of this

arrangement that thousands of migrants

hoping to reach Britain are currently

languishing in the makeshift Jungle camp

at Calais Since the referendum, calls have

been growing in France for Paris to

unilaterally end the deal, and send the

migrants on to Kent “The English wanted

to take back their freedom: they must take

back their border,” said Xavier Bertrand,

the president of the Hauts-de-France

region, which includes Calais But this

week, Paris signalled that it had no plan to

terminate or renegotiate the treaty

8 NEWS The world at a glance

THE WEEK 2 July 2016

Orlando, Florida

Shooting was “revenge”:A man whosays he was Omar Mateen’s gay loverhas claimed that Mateen committed hismassacre at the Pulse nightclub inOrlando to get vengeance on a formerlover Identified only as Miguel, the mansays he met Mateen (pictured) on adating site late last year, and that they

“hooked up” 15 to 20 times; he claimsthat Mateen didn’t talk about IslamicState, but that he’d been “terrified” when

he heard that a Puerto Rican man he’dhad sex with had tested positive for HIV He apparently said he

felt “used” by Puerto Rican men, and that he’d “make them pay”

Washington DC

Hillary’s boost from Bernie:Although he has refused formally

to endorse her candidacy, and is technically still in the Democrat

race, the socialist senator Bernie Sanders has declared that he

will vote for Hillary Clinton in November – and his supporters

seem finally to be rallying to her cause In May, 20% of Sanders

supporters said they would vote for the Republican Donald

Trump in the White House race; now, that figure is down to

8% – enormously boosting Clinton’s chances According to

The Washington Post, she currently leads Trump by 51% to

39% Sanders has vowed to battle on to the Democrat

convention, to keep his “revolution” alive, and force the party

to adopt a more progressive platform

Baltimore, Maryland

Freddie Gray cop acquitted:A second police officer has been

acquitted of all criminal charges relating to the case of Freddie

Gray – a suspect whose death from injuries sustained in a police

van last April triggered major riots in Baltimore Caesar Goodson

Jr was driving the van carrying Gray, 25, after he was forcibly

arrested for possessing a switchblade Gray wasn’t given a seat

belt, and prosecutors accused Goodson of deliberately subjecting

him to what is known as a “rough ride”, causing him to sustain

a fatal spinal-cord injury as he was thrown around in the back of

the vehicle But the court decided there was no evidence that the

defendant had driven erratically on purpose, and acquitted him

of second-degree “depraved-heart” murder – equating to gross

negligence – and lesser charges including reckless endangerment

Washington DC

Congressional sit-in:There were chaotic scenes in the US Congress

last week when around 170 Democrat congressmen and

women held a 25-hour sit-in, calling for tighter gun

controls in the wake of the Orlando massacre Their

protest, which they live-streamed from the chamber,

failed to force a vote on new legislation in the

Republican-controlled Houses of Congress; however, the

protesters insisted that their fight had only just begun They

would, they said, be taking the issue back to their constituents,

before returning “with a new sense of purpose” when Congress

resumes on 5 July The Democrats are calling for more

background checks for gun buyers, and a ban on people on

the terrorism watch list buying guns (see page 15).

Bogotá

Farc signs peace deal:Thousands

of people took to the streets ofBogotá and other Colombian citieslast week, to celebrate a deal to end the country’s 50-year civilwar Signed in Havana, Cuba, by representatives of the govern-ment and of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc),the deal confirms the cessation of hostilities, and outlines howFarc’s estimated 7,000 guerrillas will demobilise; however, thiswill only begin following the signing of a final agreement, whichcould take place later this month The conflict, described as thelongest-running insurgency in the Western hemisphere, has costmore than 200,000 lives, and displaced millions Farc’s leadershave signalled that they now plan to build a political movement

Austin, Texas

Abortion verdict:In a landmark verdict, the US Supreme Court

has struck down Texas’s strict abortion regulations Republicans

claimed the laws they introduced in 2013 were designed to protect

women But campaigners argued that the regulations – which

oblige doctors performing abortions to have admission privileges

at local hospitals, and abortion clinics to have hospital-like

facilities – had no medical benefit, and were mainly designed to

restrict women’s access to abortions by forcing clinics to close

The 5-3 ruling is the most significant on abortion by the Supreme

Court in years, and is likely to deter other states from enacting

“clinic shutdown” laws Since 2013 the number of clinics in Texas

has fallen from 42 to 19, and more closures have been expected

Panama City

Canal opens:Thousands ofpeople, including a dozenheads of state, gatheredoutside Panama City onSunday to watch a 984ftChinese container shipbecome the first commercialvessel to sail down the newly expanded Panama Canal Theten-year, $5.4bn enlargement project has made the waterway,which was opened in 1914, accessible to a new generation ofgiant ships known as the Neopanamax class The Chinese vesselpaid the government of Panama $500,000 to make its ten-hourtrip between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans “Today marks ahistoric day for Panama,” said President Juan Carlos Varela

600 heavily armed, Isis-affiliated fighterslaunched coordinated attacks on securityoutposts in Kot in Nangarhar province,close to the Pakistan border Three monthsago, the Afghan president said that IslamicState had been driven out of the country;but according to the US military, there arestill up to 3,000 fighters loyal to Isis inAfghanistan They are mostly disaffectedformer members of the Afghan andPakistani Taliban, and are concentrated inNangarhar and neighbouring Kunar.

the taxpayer for non-security-related

improvements to his private residence,

a treasury report has recommended The

upgrades included the installation of a

swimming pool, an amphitheatre and

a chicken run The report was

commissioned by the constitutional court

in March: it ruled that Zuma had “failed

to uphold, defend and respect” South

Africa’s constitution, by refusing to pay

back public money spent on his Nkandla

homestead; and asked the Treasury to

suggest what proportion of the bill Zuma

should pay It came up with 88% Once

the court approves the figure, Zuma will

have 45 days to stump up the money

Beijing

City sinking:Beijing’s

20 million residents – whoalready put up with toxicsmog and dire trafficcongestion – have learntthat their city is sinking,

at a rate of 11cm a year insome parts Engineers saythe relentless pumping ofgroundwater, for use inhomes and in industry, isbehind the subsidence,and that it poses a serioussafety risk, with damage

to railway lines one area

of concern However,Beijing is not alone in itsproblem: Mexico City

is sinking at a rate

of 28cm

a year

Qaa, Lebanon

Christian village bombed:Eight suicide

bombers raided a Christian village in

Lebanon this week, killing at least five

people Although no immediate

responsi-bility was claimed for the attacks, close

to the Syrian border, they were presumed

to be the work of Islamic State The first

attack was pre-dawn One bomber blew

himself up after being challenged by a local

resident in Qaa The others detonated their

explosives as villagers gathered at the

scene A second attack targeted funeral

preparations that evening Isis’s forces have

been ranged in the hilly border area for

years, and although the group had urged

its followers to kill non-believers in the

holy month of Ramadan, analysts believe

its prime target is the powerful Lebanese

Shia group Hezbollah, which is fighting in

support of President Assad in Syria

Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Style police:Around 50 young men havebeen arrested in Mecca in a crackdown

on “bizarre” haircuts and “anti-Islamic”

shorts According to reports in Sabq,

a pro-government newspaper, teams ofpolice officers have been patrollingshopping malls in the holy city duringRamadan, looking out for violationsincluding “bizarre hairstyles, chains thatare hung on the chest or arms, hair tiesand shorts” Photos show young menwearing distressed jeans, knee-lengthshorts and Crocs; the paper reports thatthey were taken away and “handed over tothe department of criminal investigations”

The paper also interviewed a young man

in gym shorts, who, after being detained,apparently vowed to mend his ways

“Frankly this outfit is sickening,” he wasquoted as saying “Today I have decided

to wear long sports trousers instead.”

Yerevan

Peace and anger:

The Pope angered theTurkish governmentthis week bydescribing theslaughter of millions

of Armenians byOttoman Empireforces in 1915 as a

“genocide” During athree-day visit to Armenia, Francis I alsolaid a wreath at the Armenian GenocideMemorial in Yerevan Turkey’s deputy

PM said the Pope’s words betrayed a

“crusader mentality” The next day,however, Francis urged the Armenians toreconcile with Turkey, and – at the ancientKhor Virap monastery, close to the border– he and the Armenian Patriarch releasedwhite doves in Turkey’s direction

Karachi,Pakistan

Singer shot dead:One ofPakistan’s mostrevered singerswas shot dead

by Talibangunmen as hedrove throughKarachi lastweek Amjad Sabri was famous for hisrenditions of Sufi devotional songs, and hisdeath prompted an outpouring of grief andanger The Pakistani Taliban was quick toclaim responsibility for the killing, sayingSabri (pictured) was a blasphemer (Twoyears ago he caused controversy byreferring to the family members of theProphet Mohammed in a song.) However,police said they were still investigatingwho was behind the attack

10 NEWS People

Sir Cliff on being cleared

In August 2014, while on

holiday in Portugal with

friends, Sir Cliff Richard got

a phone call telling him that his

apartment in Berkshire was

being raided by police, and that

a BBC helicopter was hovering

overhead, filming it all Baffled,

he turned on the television – to

discover he had been accused

of historic sex crimes “I didn’t

vomit, but the greatest knot in

my stomach arrived,” he told

David Wigg in the Daily Mail

“It was like a boulder You

know, you just have that, ‘God,

what is happening to me?’”

Since then, the singer has been

living in a state of constant

dread “I always knew I was

innocent, but I always worried

I would end up in prison Or at

least having to face a court.”

The strain took a physical and

mental toll: he became thin and

frail, and was unable to sleep

“I thought I was going crazy,

because I found I was talking

to myself Whether I was in the

shower or brushing my teeth,

I’m mumbling away in front of

the mirror I phoned Paul

Gambaccini [the radio DJ who

was also falsely accused of

molestation] and said I’m in

the bathroom and I’m talking

to myself He said: ‘What are

you saying?’ I told him it was

like I was facing a judge or

something He said: ‘You’re

not going crazy, think of it as

a rehearsal.’” Last week, after

a two-year police investigation,

Richard’s ordeal finally ended

when the Crown Prosecution

Service threw out all the

allegations against him His

accusers all turned out to be

thoroughly untrustworthy –one is a convicted sex offender,another allegedly plotted toblackmail him – and theirclaims easily disproved

Richard is hugely relieved; but

he knows the damage to hisreputation can never truly beundone “Because they don’tsay ‘Chucked out – noevidence,’ do they? They say

‘insufficient evidence’, which

to the reader, certainly to me,suggests maybe there is someevidence, but not enough.”

Everett’s gender rolesRupert Everett used to think hewas transgender, says CamillaLong in The Sunday Times

From the age of six to 14, hedressed exclusively as a girl

His mother – a Home Countiesmajor’s wife – indulged himhappily, giving him her ownclothes and shopping for

“nightdresses and negligees”

for him “I really wanted to be

a girl,” he says “Thank Godthe world of now wasn’t then,because I’d be on hormonesand I’d be a woman After Iwas 15 I never wanted to be

a woman again.” Instead, hediscovered acting – and sex

By 16, Everett was a “leatherqueen”, cutting a swathethrough London’s gay scene

He worries that modernparents are too quick to “getmedical” with cross-dressingchildren “It’s nice to beallowed to express yourselfbut the hormone thing, veryyoung, is a big step I think

a lot of children have anambivalence when they’re veryyoung And there should be

a way of embracing it.”

Marion Bartoli is almost unrecognisable fromwhen she won Wimbledon three years ago, says Hilary Rose in TheTimes The 31-year-old has lost more than three stone, and nowlives on a diet of extreme asceticism “I’m completely gluten-free,sugar-free, dairy-free, salt-free and everything organic.” So whatdoes she actually eat? “Steamed vegetables, salads, cucumbers.There’s a nice dessert that’s dairy-free, sugar-free, fat-free,butter-free and made of coconut oil It tastes really good!” Bartolihas also transformed her exercise regime “I stopped going to thegym and lifting 200kg I do ballet, yoga and pilates, so everything islong and elastic It’s inner strength but less of the powerful musclesthat come from the thigh that you need for tennis.” All this, sheinsists, has nothing to do with the row that broke out during herwinning season at Wimbledon, when commentator John Inverdaleasked Radio 5 Live listeners: “Do you think Bartoli’s dad told herwhen she was little, ‘You’re never going to be a looker?’” Shewasn’t traumatised or even offended, she insists The change in herlooks is simply the result of retiring from tennis, and no longerhaving to beef herself up “I think my body and my brain just cameback to normal, to who I am I think I look okay and I’m in goodhealth It’s not like I’m trying to lose weight.”

Viewpoint:

The Leave vision

“Now that it is all over, it is quite easy tosee why it all went so wrong for the Remaincamp If you are going to pin your entirestrategy on support for the status quo, youneed first to be sure that people are happywith the way things are If you think themain thing that people have to fear is thatthe economy will tank, you are in troublewhen half the country feels that, for them,

it has tanked already The Leave campaignstarted off as an appeal to return to AgathaChristie’s England – warm beer, leavingyour front door open – and evolved into

a strategy that said if you don’t like whatyour country has become, you don’t have toput up with it It went from being a dreamabout the past to a vision of the future.”

Anthony Hilton in the London Evening Standard

FarewellBob Holman, anti-poverty activist and academic, died

16 June, aged 79 Lord Mayhew of Twysden, former Northern Ireland secretary, died

25 June, aged 86 James Nicholson, crime reporter known as the

“Prince of Darkness”, died

12 June, aged 89 Harry Rabinowitz, conductor and composer of film and TV music, died

22 June, aged 100.

Book:The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the

Extremists by Khaled M Abou El Fadl

Luxury: Yorkshire tea

* Choice if allowed only one record

Castaway of the week

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured

human rights activist Sara Khan

1 You Keep Me Hangin’ On by Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and

Eddie Holland, performed by Diana Ross and the Supremes

2 Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin by Anand Bakshi and R.D Burman,

performed by Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey

3 Lacrimosa dies illa from Requiem in D minor by Mozart,

performed by the London Philharmonic Choir

4 Sweet Child O’ Mine, written and performed by Guns N’ Roses

5*A Change is Gonna Come, written and performed by Sam Cooke

6 Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey and Rick Nowels,

performed by Lana Del Rey

7 Fighter by Christina Aguilera and Scott Storch, performed by

Christina Aguilera

8 Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, performed by the New

York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein

NEWS 13

Briefing

How does one withdraw from the EU?

The process is straightforward on the face

of it It’s set out in Article 50 of the Lisbon

Treaty First, the leader of a departing

member state has to notify the European

Council – that is to say, the assembled EU

leaders; then a withdrawal agreement is

negotiated; a qualified majority of the

Council (usually 20 of 27 states) must

approve it; and it must then be ratified by

the European Parliament All those steps

must be completed within two years of

invoking Article 50: until then, the UK is

still an EU member and most things stay

the same But as no state has ever left

before, the process is in practice entirely

untested No one even knows how soon

Article 50 must be triggered: Boris Johnson

thinks there’s no rush, while the EU’s top

officials insist that talks must begin “as soon as possible, however

painful that process may be”

And what will the negotiations cover?

The first thing Britain must do is negotiate an exit agreement –

a treaty to unravel its current involvement with the EU This will

have to settle the status of the 1.3 million Britons living in EU

countries, and the three million EU citizens living in the UK It

will have to arrange for the winding down of UK contributions to

the EU; the closure of EU agencies in Britain such as the European

Banking Authority; and, most complex of all, the untangling of

shared laws and regulations (see box) And that’s just the start.

What’s the next thing we would need to resolve?

Future relationships between ourselves and the Union This would

involve matters such as the rights of British people in Europe –

and of Europeans in Britain – to visit, work and use health

services; the right of British fishermen to fish in EU waters, and

vice versa; and cooperation on foreign policy, justice and security

But most vexed of all will be the question of trade between Britain

and the EU bloc This deal will probably be classified as a “mixed

agreement” – one made with both the EU and its members – so it

would have to be ratified by every single national parliament

What will happen to EU citizens in the UK?

The Leave campaign has given assurances that any new

immigration system won’t affect EU

citizens who are already in Britain:

they’ll have all the rights they have

now The hope is that Britons on the

continent will be similarly protected:

the Vienna Convention states that

when a treaty between two states is

terminated, the rights previously

acquired under it by an individual in a

foreign country are not lost However,

this is an area of uncertainty: some

rights the EU confers – on owning

property, for example, or on using

public services – may be affected And

were we to impose an immigration

points system on EU citizens, the EU

would presumably do the same to us

What about trade?

During the campaign, there was much

breezy discussion of the various

options: the Swiss, the Norwegian,

and the Canadian All involve a basic

dilemma: if the UK is to gain access to theSingle Market – for instance, by rejoiningthe European Economic Area – it willalmost certainly have to accept its rules,such as the free movement of people, andproduct standards, and pay into EU funds.This would presumably be unacceptable to

a Eurosceptic British leadership

So what’s the alternative?

A bespoke trade deal: a leaked Germangovernment document suggests that Britainshould have “associative status” But if so,the terms are likely to be tough The UK isvery unpopular in Brussels, which may well

want to make an example of Britain, pour

encourager les autres “Deserters won’t be

welcomed with open arms,” in the words

of Jean-Claude Juncker, the president ofthe European Commission

But doesn’t the UK have leverage?

Some German carmakers and French wine producers will pushfor a friendly deal with what will still be the EU’s largest singleexport market Since the UK imports far more than it exports tothe EU, there’s a good chance zero or low tariffs on manufacturedgoods in and out of Britain could be agreed Yet a much largerproportion of the UK economy is dependent on EU exports(12.6%, according to official figures) than vice versa: only 3.1%

of the EU’s economy relies on exports to the UK In any case, the

EU could target specific sectors (e.g farming) or impose quotas.Most of all, it will be keen to cut a tough deal on services Atpresent, banks and insurers based in London are allowed to set

up branches and sell services throughout the EU Both Paris andFrankfurt have long looked jealously at London’s role as thefinancial capital of Europe “Britain’s service economy will be cut

up like an old car,” warns one well-informed Brussels observer.What happens if the talks are deadlocked?

If there were no deal, we could fall back on the World TradeOrganisation rules which govern international trade But some ofthe tariffs we would then have to face when selling into Europe– 20% for meat and butter, for example – would be ruinous Tomake things worse, the UK’s agreements with other WTO mem-bers might need to be renegotiated, since they were agreed with

the EU as a whole Many of thesenations are already negotiating withthe EU – and, as Barack Obama said,we’d be “at the back of the queue”

So they’ve got us over a barrel?

It looks that way, especially as the

UK has a mere handful of tradenegotiators: that competence waspassed over to Brussels decades ago

In addition, Article 50 is designed toweaken the departing state’s position:the two-year negotiation deadline, forinstance, can only be extended withthe consent of all 27 other states.Even where relations are good, EUtrade deals take a long time Canada’stook seven years and isn’t yet ratified.The Government thinks the processcould lead to “a decade or more ofuncertainty” Brexiters remainbullish But as the Remain campaignused to say, it’s a leap in the dark

Getting out of Europe

Voting to leave the EU is the easy bit: the hard part comes in working out a new settlement with the Union

Juncker: “Deserters won’t be welcomed”

The legal vacuum

Undoing the supremacy of EU law over UK law would

be relatively easy: the European Communities Act 1972would be repealed But that would only be the start

The EU has sole legal responsibility for many vitalareas of law such as competition, international trade,agriculture and fisheries, and the rules governing freemovement and the single market It also has animportant role in many areas of national law, such asemployment, sexual equality, and the environment

Over the 70 years of its existence, it has produced avast body of legislation said to cover 80,000 pages ofthe statute book: treaties, court decisions, regulationsissued directly by Brussels, and directives, which allhave to be incorporated into national law

If the 1972 law were repealed, regulations would cease

to apply Industries previously governed by EU legalframeworks, such as financial services, would findthemselves in a regulatory vacuum Parliament wouldhave to either pass these into law anew, or producenew legislation Equally, the vast body of UKlegislation implementing EU laws will have to be kept,amended or repealed After Brexit, not much is certain– but there will be plenty of work for lawyers

14 NEWS Best articles: Britain

One thing you can say for sure about Brexit, says Fintan O’Toole

It has “planted a bomb” under Ireland’s peace settlement Untilnow, “all but a few diehards” had learnt to live with partition,not least because the border between Northern Ireland and theRepublic “had become so soft as to be barely noticeable” But thiscustoms barrier will now have to become a full-scale immigrationborder in order to stop EU migrants who’ve legally entered theRepublic from crossing into the UK “Meanwhile, the cornerstone

of the peace settlement, the Belfast Agreement of 1998, is beingundermined.” One of its key provisions is that anyone born inNorthern Ireland has the right to be a citizen of the UK or Ireland

or both How will that work post-Brexit? “Can someone be both

an EU citizen and not an EU citizen?” Northern Ireland ately needed a generation of relative political boredom” to allowits fragile new settlement to bed in All that has now been put atrisk The reckless disregard of the Brexiters for the knock-oneffects on Northern Ireland is appalling – and “frankly insulting”

“desper-Referendums

are always

a bad idea

Robert Harris

The Sunday Times

We can draw one clear lesson from the Brexit vote, says RobertHarris: it’s a truly bad idea to call referendums Reducing complexissues to a binary “yes or no” vote invariably leads to “vicious,divisive” campaigns, as Scotland found in 2014 And as criticshave often pointed out, the device is inimical to our system ofparliamentary democracy In 1945, Clement Attlee denouncedreferendums as “alien to all our traditions” – words approvinglyquoted by Margaret Thatcher 30 years later when she condemnedHarold Wilson’s decision to hold a plebiscite on membership ofthe Common Market The 18th century conservative philosopherEdmund Burke observed that while every citizen was entitled todeliver an opinion, it was quite another matter for them to issueinstructions that MPs were “bound blindly and implicitly toobey” It leads to crazy situations like today, with Brexit beingforced on MPs who believe overwhelmingly that it is a terribleidea David Cameron – “a Tory, who is supposed to believe in thewisdom of ancient institutions” – should have known better

“People in this country have had enough of experts,” sneeredGove – a comment that will surely “follow him to his grave”

When mockery doesn’t work, “the worst journalists lie”, and thatwas the approach of the Leave campaigners, who printed a bogusfigure on their battle bus about the “£350m” Britain sends toBrussels each week, and groundlessly accused impartial figures

of bad faith But Johnson and Gove are now set to be found out

“If we could only find a halfway competent opposition, the verypopulist forces they have exploited and misled so grievouslywould turn on them The fear in their eyes shows they know it.”

to break wind a little?’”Unconvinced, the referee red-carded him for “unsports-manlike behaviour”

An amateur musician who took to practising all night in her flat, in Folkestone, made such a ghastly noise that her violin has been confis- cated by the local council.

“When she played,” said a neighbour, “it sounded like a cat being strangled The guitar-playing wasn’t much better.” Shepway District Council has now given Tsige- Jahna Simmons a noise abatement notice, and told her if she doesn’t pay the costs incurred, her instru- ments will be destroyed.

A motivational trainer who charges £10,000 a day has been forced to apologise after being caught on video spanking some of the staff he was motivating “Get your butts ready,” Jiang Yang tells the eight men and women, who came last in a test at

a training session for 200 staff from China’s Changzhi Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank He then whacks them with a thick piece of wood before subjecting them to his

“hair-cutting punishment” It’s “a training model I’ve tried for years,” explained Jiang “It’s a way of waking

up a person’s vigour.” The bank’s chairman has been suspended for “failing strictly to check the content

of the course”.

IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids

“Ashamed Terrified Shocked Horrified.” That tweet by a forming artist typified the reaction of the “culturati” and liberalmedia to the referendum result I feel much the same, says LibbyPurves: only not about the vote, but about the hysterical response

per-of the chattering classes The lamentations over our withdrawalfrom “a 43-year-old administrative arrangement” are “beyondparody” Someone in the FT mourned “the lost opportunities,friendships, marriages and experiences” – as if “nobody ever had

a foreign friend before Directive 2004/38/EC” Others paradedtheir grief on social media: “spent most of yesterday crying,couldn’t get out of bed”; “texting people I love telling them we’ll

be OK”; “angry and betrayed.” “I don’t think I’ve ever wantedmagic more,” bleated J.K Rowling to her Twitter followers

And when liberal types weren’t wallowing in this self-indulgentanguish, they were portraying Leave voters as universally stupid

or bigoted Never mind that “only 35% of the 18- to 24-year-oldsnow being soppily mourned as ‘disinherited’” bothered voting Allthese liberals weeping into their lattes “really need to grow up”

NEWS 15

Best of the American columnists

2 July 2016 THE WEEK

I support these politicians’ demands for new restrictions on access to firearms, but their righteouscause does not justify this “unprecedented” form of protest “Democracy, if it means anything atall, implies a process.” True, it’s hardly unheard of for members of Congress to resort to wreckingtactics, or petulant, self-defeating gestures: “witness the fatuous, repetitive votes on the House floor

to repeal Obamacare”; or the occasions when rebels have shut down the federal government byrefusing to pass vital funding bills But these previous actions have always complied with establishedprocedures “The sit-in is different in kind.” It’s pure “disruption” of the sort usually seen only onstudent campuses No cause, not even gun control, warrants such behaviour “The long-term health

of democratic institutions matters more than the political impulses of the moment.”

The children

we condemn

to poverty

Nicholas Kristof

The New York Times

It’s time for a mea culpa, says Nicholas Kristof In 1996, when Bill Clinton introduced hiscontroversial welfare reforms, I supported them I believed the measures, which included a strictlifetime limit on benefits, would help break the cycle of dependency But having witnessed the effects

of these reforms over subsequent years, “I’ve decided I was wrong” The legislation did initially reapdividends, moving many people from benefits into work, but that “employment bump” has sincestalled and many at the bottom of the heap are now struggling An estimated three million Americanchildren are today living in households with cash incomes of “less than $2 per person per day, aglobal metric of extreme poverty That’s one American child in 25.” Thanks to food stamps, suchfamilies aren’t actually starving They also get other assistance such as church clothing donations.But they get no cash welfare at all to help pay essential bills Indeed, there are “now more postagestamp collectors in the US than there are families collecting cash welfare” I’m not calling for a return

to America’s previous, flawed welfare system, which did trap people in poverty But the new system,which leaves some families with children “utterly destitute”, clearly needs to be improved

This is “a terrible time to not be brainy”, says David H Freedman Until a few decades ago, sing only middling intelligence” was no great barrier to success Employers were less concerned withelite degrees than “integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along” But today, thanks to our

“posses-“fetishisation of IQ”, intelligence is becoming the sole measure of human worth, determining howmuch money you make, where you live and whom you marry Companies are insisting on ever-higher academic standards from job applicants, even when it’s not really justified Education officials,meanwhile, are devoting endless effort to locating and nurturing gifted poor children – those

“overlooked gems” – but worrying less about the “problematically ungifted majority” – the oneswhose future jobs are disappearing as a result of automation We need to think more about how tomake our society work for people of all capacities, not just the bright minority When the Britishsociologist Michael Young coined the term meritocracy in 1958, it was in a “dystopian satire”

At the time, his imaginary world, “in which intelligence fully determined who thrived and wholanguished, was understood to be predatory and far-fetched” Yet his vision is fast coming true

Contrary to the Washington consensus,

Donald Trump is not running a bad

campaign, said Chris Cillizza inThe

Washington Post He’s just not really

running a campaign at all It emerged

last week that the tycoon raised all of

$3.1m in May – less than a typical

candidate for the Senate or the House

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, raised

$27m in that month Trump, who has

just fired his campaign manager and still

has no communications director, had

just 69 people on staff at the end of

May; Clinton had 683 Trump has yet

to spend any money at all on TV

advertising in swing states, while

Clinton is spending $23m on such an effort She’s also investing

in a vital ground campaign, while Trump’s strategy still revolves

around giving speeches to supporters, calling in to TV shows

and sending angry tweets

Trump’s campaign is floundering and “broke”, said Jonah

Goldberg in theNational Review He boasted about rejecting

donations from fat cats during the primaries, but now that he’s

seeking financial assistance, little has been forthcoming That’s

unlikely to change after last week’s revelation that a fifth of his

campaign’s May expenditures were made up of reimbursements

to Trump-owned businesses, and ofsalaries for himself and his family Why,you might ask, is Trump, who claims to

be worth “in excess” of $10bn, notploughing some of his own money intohis campaign? Why indeed “TheFounders pledged their lives, theirfortunes, and their sacred honour.”Surely Trump, who says he’s the onlyone who can save America, “couldpawn Trump Tower”

The suspicion must be, said ScottMartelle in theLos Angeles Times, thatTrump, who is still refusing to releasehis tax returns, is worth nothing like asmuch as he claims Without enough funds to mount a

traditional campaign, his only option will be to keep seekingfree coverage – which in his case means providing a steadystream of “outrageousness” No wonder the Republican Party

is panicking and still wondering desperately if it can deny himthe nomination The best thing the party can do now, saidGeorge F Will inThe Washington Post, is to withholddonations from Trump and taunt him into spending his ownmoney Every dime he squanders on his campaign “willcontribute to a redemptive outcome, a defeat so humiliating –

so continental – that even Republicans will be edified by it”

Make Trump put his money where his mouth is

Why isn’t Trump funding his own campaign?

16 NEWS Best articles: Europe

When German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier last week denounced Nato’s show of force

in Eastern Europe as provocative “sabre-rattling”, he was condemned for being disloyal Yet he has

a point, says Theo Sommer Yes, Poland and the three Baltic states need assurances that the West willdefend them should Russia invade But the threat of Russia actually doing so has been wildly exag-gerated by Nato generals However unnerving Putin’s warlike rhetoric may sound, the Baltic states– as independent defence analysts in Moscow make clear – lie outside the sphere he seeks to control;

he has no wish to provoke a nuclear showdown So enough of the “icy” speeches from both sides:Europe must rethink its relationship with Russia and start a meaningful dialogue And that means

recognising that no Russian leader will ever return Crimea to Ukraine, however long sanctions are in

place Instead, let’s use Crimea as a “trump card”: accept Russia’s ownership of it as part of a “granddeal” that includes a full settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine Whatever hawkish critics mayinsinuate, one need not be on the Kremlin’s payroll to prefer negotiation over preparations for war

of Western history in the museum, he hopes to mute the charge that Turkey committed genocideagainst the Armenians Most of all, he wants to stamp his conservative Islamist ideology on the city

of Istanbul: for Erdogan, winning the ideological war is more important than keeping the peace

RUSSIA

TURKEY

Bravo for the British, said Giorgos

P Malouchos inTo Vima (Athens)

They’ve seized back control of their

affairs from a Europe “dominated

by Germany” They’ve shown the

world they won’t be blackmailed

into submission What a victory for

democracy – the cornerstone of our

Western civilisation What you fail

to grasp, said Ignacio Molina in

El País (Madrid), is that Leave

voters were not motivated by “lofty

democratic ideals”, let alone rational

objections to the EU’s manifold

shortcomings On the contrary, they

rejected precisely what’s best about

the EU: free movement of people,

cultural pluralism and a preference for consensus over bickering

between rival parliaments Rather than pile on the attacks

against the “miraculous, fragile artifice” we call Brussels, we

should close ranks against those who want to import the UK’s

“toxic xenophobia and provincialism”

That xenophobia was most clearly expressed, said Calin

Nicolescu inAdevarul (Bucharest), in the way Brexiters

mercilessly targeted the poor of Eastern Europe, accusing them

of living off British welfare Not a word about the contribution

they make to Britain’s economic growth And now that the UK

is quitting the EU, be warned: Britain will seek to pick and

choose from would-be immigrants willing to “enslave”

them-selves But they’re not the only ones who can be selective, said

Philippine Robert inCapital (France) Brexit offers rich pickings

to EU member states France will “roll out the red carpet” for

businesses fleeing London (which pre-Brexit hosted 40% of the

European headquarters of the 250 largest multinationals); Paris

is well-positioned to take over as the EU’s financial centre, a

prize that Frankfurt too is eyeing; Spain, and eastern countries

such as Poland and Slovakia with cheaper labour costs, will pull

out the welcome mat for car manufacturers seeking to relocate

There may be big cultural benefits as well, said Jean Quatremer

inLibération (Paris) Official EU business – once conducted

equally in English, German and French – has of late become

a predominantly English affair, especially on EU websites But

now that’s all likely to change – itmakes no sense for member states tocommunicate with each other in thelanguage of a country that isn’t even

a member The days when Britainexerted a disproportionate influence

on Europe may be over

It will certainly be a lot easier toreshape the union with the Britishout of the way, said ChristophPrantner inDer Standard (Vienna).They’ve always been obstructive.Remember Margaret Thatcher?

“That housewife” won’t be satisfied,Jacques Chirac famously remarked,until she has “my balls on a plate”.And her successors have been little better Well, now the Britshave won the ultimate opt-out, one that leaves them free tobuild a new “empire” based on “superpower nostalgia” and

“fantasies of national autonomy in a globalised world” Butit’s not just Britain that poses a challenge to the EU, saidWerner Mussler inFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung In everymember state, Eurosceptic voices are clamouring for change.Yet even after the shock of Brexit, many EU bigwigs remainhopelessly out of touch with the mood across Europe Thepresident of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker,even sees Brexit as a pretext to deepen monetary union: sostrong is his “anti-British bias”, whatever the Brits decide, hewants the opposite

One can celebrate Brexit as a much-needed “slap in the face forthe EU apparatchiks”, said Alexandra Lucas Coelho inPúblico(Lisbon) But I’m still sad the British are leaving My generationassumed that ever more open borders, with everyone comingand going as they pleased, was the way the world was headed.Brexit has reversed the direction of travel It seems Europe has

“become old before its time” But let’s face it, the “old Europe

is dying”, said Jakob Augstein inDer Spiegel (Hamburg) Weneed a new vision The EU was founded on the ruins of fascism– on the cry of “Never again war” The task now is to rebuildthe EU and its institutions on the “ruins of capitalism”, thistime with the cry of “No more injustice” In sum, we can viewBrexit as a “historic” moment, as the start of something new

Good riddance? Is Europe better off without Britain?

Thatcher with Chirac: all take, no give

What if we could start again?

Eden, begins July

 
























        ... andthey seized their chance to put the bootinto the Establishment They felt theyhad nothing to lose, and perhaps it wascathartic But the EU is not the source of all their problems: it’snot the EU’s... (Glasgow):

talking to the EU about whether Scotland could

join as an independent nation, or even “remain

in the EU as the rest of the UKleaves” These are “constitutionallyuncharted... bepossible: when the WestminsterParliament votes to take the UK out

of the EU, it will have to seek theScottish Parliament’s consent, andMSPs could simply refuse TheScots have been part of the EU