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2 NEWSTHE WEEK 3 November 2018 The main stories… It wasn’t all bad With this Budget, “Eeyore” transformed himself into “Feel-good Phil”, said the Daily Mail.. Merkel, who has led Germany

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The shaming of a tycoon

2 NEWS

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

The main stories…

It wasn’t all bad

With this Budget, “Eeyore” transformed himself into

“Feel-good Phil”, said the Daily Mail There were jokes

and cash pledges aplenty, and some excellentnew policies, including a tax on hard-to-recycleplastic packaging, higher duty on onlinegaming, an “end to ruinous PFI contracts” and

a package of measures to help high streets Thelong-overdue levy on tech giants’ UK revenue,which will potentially raise £400m, wasparticularly welcome, said The Sun We wouldhave preferred Hammond to have announced

a few more radical low-tax measures “Butthat gripe aside, what was not to like?”

All this extra spending was made possible

by the Office for Budget Responsibility(OBR), said The Independent, which offeredHammond a £13bn windfall by revising itsprojections Hammond could have banked thismoney to reduce the deficit, but he chose to spend it instead.He’s taking “an Augustinian stance”, said the FT: “Let me bevirtuous but not quite yet.” The result will be yet more cashfor the health service, said The Daily Telegraph In 2000, theNHS accounted for 23% of public service spending; by 2024,that will have risen to 38% We must hope the new money

is well spent, but past experience suggests it won’t be

Philip Hammond declared this week that

Britain’s era of austerity was “finally coming

to an end”, as he unveiled the biggest giveaway

Budget since the Tories came to power in 2010

Buoyed by a £13bn annual windfall from

better-than-expected tax receipts and borrowing

forecasts, the Chancellor announced plans to

boost funding for strained public services, and to

bring forward income tax cuts and increases in

the national living wage But in a clear warning

to Eurosceptics, Hammond insisted that these

spending commitments were dependent on the

UK securing a Brexit deal with the EU, a

sentiment he later softened

The biggest beneficiary of the Budget is the

NHS, which is set to receive £20.5bn a year of

extra funding Hammond also announced another £1.7bn

a year to smooth the introduction of universal credit; extra

cash for defence, roads and schools; and cuts to business rates

for smaller high street shops to help them cope with online

competition In addition, he unveiled some revenue-raising

measures, including a new “digital services tax” aimed at big

tech platforms such as Google and Amazon (see page 49).

Feel-good Phil: “a gamble”?

The giveaway Budget

Europe is going to miss Merkel, said the FT Under herleadership, the continent’s most powerful nation has been “a

strong and stabilising influence” Indeed, theten years since the financial crisis have shownthat little can be achieved without Berlin’sconsent or support Merkel has her critics, saidThe New York Times Some think her refusal

to cut Greece any slack when it was on theropes was excessive, and her decision to admitmore than a million migrants in 2015 provedhighly divisive But she is still “one of the mostremarkable Western leaders” of her epoch Itisn’t eloquence or charisma that marks herout: it’s her calm attachment to stability At

a time when strident populism is on the rise,

“Mutti” Merkel exemplifies the sober values

of her Lutheran background: “moderation” and “decency.”Merkel had to go, said Die Zeit After the electoral debacle

in Hesse, her position was untenable The result showedhow in recent years she has lost touch with ordinary CDUmembers, by sacrificing the party’s core conservative values

to political pragmatism Now she has paid the price

Angela Merkel has signalled the end of

an era in German politics by announcing

she will not stand for chancellor at the

next elections, in 2021 Merkel, who has

led Germany for the past 13 years, also

said she would be quitting as leader of the

ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU)

Her decision was prompted by the CDU’s

disastrous performance in elections in the

state of Hesse, where its share of the vote

fell to 27.9%, down 11 points from the

previous regional election, in 2013 Merkel

said the result was a “turning point”, and

that it was time to “open a new chapter”

The Hesse election brought more bad news for Merkel’s

coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which

recorded its worst showing since 1946, down 11 points to

19.8% from 2013 Many voters switched support to the

Greens or to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD),

which tripled its vote to 13%

“Mutti”: calm attachment to stability

Merkel’s long farewell

William Morris’s country home

is to be saved from dilapidation

by a £4.3m lottery grant

Kelmscott Manor, a 16th

century estate in the Cotswolds,

was the designer‘s idyllic retreat

from 1871 until his death in

1896 Its wild flowers and trees

inspired his wallpaper designs;

his novel News from Nowhere

features a fictionalised version

of it The grant will enable the

owners, the Society of

Antiquaries of London, to carry

out repairs to the house and

renovate the gardens

Two teenagers from a southWales valley have just boughtthe screen rights to a StephenKing story – for just $1 AlfieEvans, 16, and Cerys Cliff, 14,from Tredegar, are writing the

script for, and filming, Stationary

Bike; it will be shot in Tredegar

and make use of local actors.The teenagers are benefitingfrom a scheme devised by King,

to let young people make filmsfor festival release based onhis work A previous beneficiarywas Frank Darabont, director of

The Shawshank Redemption: he

began his career by adapting aKing story when he was 24

The Galápagos Islands are not the remote wilderness many take them to be They contain 317 hotels and attract 245,000 visitors

a year But now a crowdfunding campaign has ensured that a 568-acre site on San Cristóbal, the island where Charles Darwin first went ashore on his visit in 1835, will be saved from development.

The site was reportedly being eyed by hotel developers, but conservationists raised £1.35m online to create the new Galápagos Nature Reserve and help protect – among others – the endangered Galápagos petrel, the blue-footed booby (pictured) and the renowned giant tortoises.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM

NEWS 3

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

…and how they were covered

What next?

The Chancellor had three tasks in this week’s Budget, said Francis Elliott in The Times He

needed to “add credibility to Theresa May’s promise that austerity is over; to buy support for

a Brexit deal; and to hose down the fiercest fires licking at the Government’s slender majority”

By and large, he pulled it off Unlike most recent Budgets, which have started falling apart

within hours of delivery, Hammond’s Budget has so far “stayed pretty ravelled”, said

John Rentoul in The Independent The plethora of spending announcements closed off

every line of attack for Labour, which was reduced to complaining that “it’s not enough”

The Budget may win May some “short-term political advantage”, said Peter Oborne in the

Daily Mail But by undermining the Tories’ reputation for fiscal responsibility and encouraging

an ill-advised “spending arms race with Labour”, it could exact a heavy price in the longer

term The promise of an end to austerity is certainly “a hostage to fortune”, said Alex Massie

in The Spectator Once you strip out the boost for the NHS – which is set to account for £84bn

of the extra £103bn spending between now and 2023 – the reality is that most departments will

still be left “having to do more with less” The extra money for defence won’t make up for

earlier cuts Nor, “almost certainly”, will the new money for universal credit be enough

The NHS pledge aside, the sums on offer are “hilariously small”, said Jonn Elledge in the

New Statesman The £400m set aside for schools, for instance, amounts to only £10,000 per

primary school and £50,000 per secondary That’s not going to make much difference at a time

when many cash-strapped schools have been forced to close on Friday afternoons Nor will the

£420m for patching up potholes go far In spending terms, these pledges are “more like

thimbles than pots”, agreed Jane Merrick in The Independent But with Brexit looming on the

horizon, Hammond lacks the freedom to engage in much more than “tokenistic” gestures As

he suggested at the weekend, he’ll be forced to return with an emergency Budget in the spring

if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal Britain, for now, is stuck in a “holding pattern”

What the commentators said

The UK will benefit from a

“double dividend” if a deal

is agreed with Brussels nextspring, Hammond told MPs.Not only will the economybenefit from a boost toconfidence, he said, buthe’ll be free to spend the

£15bn set aside as a “fiscalbuffer” against a no-deal exit.The Institute for FiscalStudies (IFS) warned thatHammond had taken “a bit

of a gamble” with the publicfinances The independentthink tank pointed out thatthe OBR could revise itsforecasts downwards nextyear, upsetting Hammond’scalculations The IFS reckonsthere’s a one-in-three chance

of the forecasts for thepublic finances deterioratingsignificantly over the nextyear, even with a Brexit deal

What next?

Merkel’s announcement has “shocked political Berlin”, but it should come as no surprise,

said Matthew Karnitschnig on Politico Until now her record at the polls – she has won four

successive elections – has silenced her enemies inside the CDU, who fret over the party’s

perceived drift to the Left and its liberal line on immigration But the clamour for change has

been growing ever since the party’s drubbing in last year’s federal election: the issue had

become not whether she’d step down, but when German voters have reason to be exasperated

with her, said Ines Pohl in Deutsche Welle The coalition has spent much of the last year on

“navel-gazing” and internal squabbling, rather than addressing such urgent issues as the rise

of the nationalist Right Now we see that even in prosperous regions such as Hesse, voters have

had enough A recent poll indicates that the CDU, and its sister party, the CSU, now enjoy just

24% support nationwide The public wants “renewal” and they don’t trust Merkel to deliver it

The big question now is whether Merkel can survive as chancellor until 2021 After their

humiliation in Hesse, her SPD allies won’t want to trigger a new federal election by pulling out

of the coalition, said Oliver Moody in The Times But their calculations could very well change:

better to be in opposition than face further defeats tied to an unpopular government The

resulting uncertainty is bad news for Europe as well as Germany, said Jon Henley in The

Guardian It was Merkel’s blend of “principle and pragmatism” that guided the EU through

the 2008 financial crisis, the migration crisis and Russian aggression in Ukraine Now the bloc

faces a slew of new problems – from Brexit and the Italian budget crisis to the likelihood of

big gains for populist parties in next year’s elections to the European Parliament What’s more,

Britain was hoping Merkel might have fixed a favourable last-minute Brexit deal But now,

“hugely weakened” by admitting to her imminent departure, she is in no position to help

What the commentators said

Deep divisions may emergewhen the CDU choosesMerkel’s successor as partyleader in December Herown preferred candidate

is Annegret Karrenbauer, the CDU’sgeneral secretary But she

Kramp-is likely to face a challengefrom 38-year-old healthminister Jens Spahn,who has openly attackedMerkel’s liberal line

on some key policies,notably immigration

According to the Brusselsgrapevine, Merkel was inline for a senior job in the

EU However, she hasindicated that she plans

to leave politics altogetherafter quitting as chancellor

A few years ago, roads teeming with autonomous cars seemedwildly implausible – but there again, so did mobile phones a fewyears before that It’s pretty clear the revolution is under way Thisweek, Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was given the green light

to test fully autonomous vehicles (with no human behind the wheel) on public roads in California

We know that Uber can’t wait to make use of all the route data it has acquired, and get rid of its

drivers, with all their irksome demands for toilet breaks and paid holiday The taxi firm Addison Lee

declared last week that it will have self-driving cabs on the streets of London by 2021

The question is, what will this new world look like? Will there be more traffic – as cars become

comfortable mobile offices and entertainment spaces – or less, owing to automated vehicles reacting

more efficiently? And who will lose out? Not just drivers, but also driving instructors, traffic wardens

and perhaps traffic cops Then there is the big issue: safety Decisions being made by software

engineers, about how cars behave on the road, will have life and death consequences in the future

(see page 19) Human drivers go through rigorous training, and they kill more than a million people

each year Driverless cars will have to show they are safer, but there will still be accidents, and when

there are, who will take the blame? I foresee more work for lawyers in the

new world – provided they too haven’t lost their jobs to algorithms by then

THE WEEK

Caroline Law

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4 NEWS Politics

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

Controversy of the week

Brazil finds its Trump

“Jair Bolsonaro is a right-wing Brazilian who holds repulsive

views,” said The New York Times “He has said that if he

had a homosexual son, he’d prefer him dead; that a female

colleague in the parliament was too ugly to rape; that

Afro-Brazilians are lazy and fat; that global warming amounts to

‘greenhouse fables’.” A former army captain, he has frequently

expressed his admiration for the military dictatorship that ran

Brazil between 1964 and 1985 And last Sunday, he was

elected president of the world’s fourth largest democracy,

beating his leftist rival, Fernando Haddad of the Workers’

Party, by 55% to 45% Brazil is emerging from its worst-ever

recession; a corruption scandal has engulfed much of its ruling

class; and crime is sky-high, with 175 homicides per day

last year Bolsonaro, an evangelical Christian who “preaches

a blend of social conservatism and economic liberalism”, has promised to clean out the stables

“Sound familiar?” He is the latest in a line of populists who have ridden a wave of discontent and

frustration all the way to the highest office Not surprisingly, he is often described as Brazil’s Trump

Trump has nothing on Bolsonaro, who is probably “the most extremist elected leader in the world”,

said Benjamin Fogel in The Independent He openly speaks of killing or banishing his political

opponents, whom he depicts as “some sort of combination between the Sinaloa Cartel and Stalin’s

Soviet Union” Bolsonaro regards torture as legitimate, and he has promised to give police “carte

blanche to kill” (in a country where they already kill more than 5,000 people a year) In short,

“fascism has arrived in Brazil” The election result also spells environmental disaster for the world at

large, said Daphne Leprince-Ringuet on Wired Bolsonaro has threatened to pull out of the climate

change accords He thinks that Brazil’s Forest Code – which limits the deforestation of the Amazon

– is harming agriculture, and he has a personal vendetta against the agency that enforces it (he was

once caught fishing illegally in a reserve and fined $2,700) The reservation of land for indigenous

minorities is also under threat “Minorities,” he said recently, “have to bend down to the majority.”

To his critics, Bolsonaro is a fascist, said the FT To many Brazilians, though, he “was simply the

lesser evil at Sunday’s ballot box” The Workers’ Party was “unelectable”: it had presided over the

“Car Wash” corruption scandal – for which its ex-leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was imprisoned

– and economic meltdown Much of South America has recently swung to the right, without turning

to dictatorship Brazil badly needs economic reform, and the markets are hopeful that Bolsonaro –

who has appointed a respected liberal economist, Paulo Guedes, as his finance minister – may bring

it If the new president discards his “gratuitously offensive election talk”, said The Times, and makes

clear he will not bring back military rule, then “he can bring urgent and positive change”

Spirit of the age Good week for:Ruth Davidson, who is celebrating the birth of a baby boy:

Finn Paul Davidson, weighing in at 10lb 1.5oz The head ofthe Scottish Conservatives is the first British party leader to givebirth while in office “Ruth did brilliantly,” said her fiancée,Jen Wilson, “and Finn clearly has his mother’s lungs on him”

Slough, which has achieved the distinction of being judged thebest town in Britain to work in – for the second year running

Belying its undeserved reputation for dreariness (it was where the

sitcom, The Office, was set) it came top in a survey of 25 towns

compiled by job search website Glassdoor that, among otherthings, measured overall job satisfaction and ease of getting a job

Equality, after the government announced that all roles in theBritish Armed Forces, including in the Royal Marines and thefront-line infantry, will now be open to women

Bad week for:

Christmas glitter, after several big retailers, includingJohn Lewis, Next and Paperchase, announced they’d be cuttingback severely on its use on their Christmas items They aredeglittering their stock due to concern for the environment:

glitter contributes to the tide of microplastics polluting theworld’s oceans; and glitter-covered products cannot be recycled

Martin Amis, after a film of his classic novel London Fields,

starring Amber Heard, had the second-worst opening weekendsince records began The 613 US cinemas it was shown in madeonly £205 from ticket sales on average Critics described it as

“aggressively awful”, among other jibes

New civil service head

Mark Sedwill, the UKNational Security Adviser,has been appointed CabinetSecretary and head of thecivil service He replaces SirJeremy Heywood, who,owing to ill health, is steppingdown from the role he heldfor six years Sedwill, aveteran of the ForeignOffice, has worked closelywith Theresa May since 2013,when she made him herpermanent secretary at theHome Office As CabinetSecretary, he will be herprincipal adviser Hisappointment is unusual in

so far as every other cabinetsecretary since WWII has had

a background in the Treasury

Fracking halted

Fracking at the UK’s onlyactive shale gas site washalted this week, followingthe largest earth tremor sincework began two weeks ago.The earthquake on Monday,which measured 1.1 on theRichter scale, prompted thefirm Cuadrilla to halt work

at the Lancashire site for

18 hours – the third suchpause in four days The firmwas forced to stop frackingentirely in 2011 following aseries of tremors in the area;under its current licence, itmust halt work in the event

of a tremor of 0.5-magnitude

or more None of theearthquakes so far have beenpowerful enough to be felt at

ground level (see page 47).

Poll watch

59% of Britons support the

full legalisation of cannabis

– up from 43% in May – while 31% oppose it 15% of

people have used cannabis

in the past year 76% would

be willing to consume it ifprescribed by a doctor

Populus/The Independent

51% of UK adults sleep

for six hours or fewer a

night A mere 17% get the

recommended eight hours

Censuswide/The Times

43% of Britons think Islam is

incompatible with Western

liberal society 40% would

be concerned if a familymember married a Muslim

and 43% would worry if a

mosque were built in their

neighbourhood 58% think

Islamophobia is a problem

in Britain; 47% believe the

country is becoming lesstolerant of Muslims

ComRes/The Sunday Times

The head of Southampton’s

student union came under

fire last week for vowing to

take down a “mural of white

men” in the university

senate room, “even if I have

to paint over it myself”, on

Twitter Emily Dawes had

apparently not realised that

the mural, painted by Sir

William Rothenstein in 1916,

is a memorial to students

killed in the First World War

who were unable to

complete their degrees

She has since apologised

British pet owners will spend

£1.7bn this year on pets, and

it is millennials who are

fuelling the boom According

to research group Mintel,

more than half of 19- to

38-year-olds say they’d rather

cut back on spending on

themselves than their pets;

two out of five would spend

as much on a Christmas gift

for their pet as for a friend

Bolsonaro: is he a fascist?

as one of the best in eastern Europe, says

it will quit Budapest and move most ofits teaching to Vienna if Viktor Orbán’sgovernment refuses to recognise its right toexist Hungary’s ruling Fidesz Party, whichregards the Budapest-born philanthropist

as an enemy of the state, passed a law lastyear stating that a foreign university couldoperate in Hungary only if it had a campus

in its own country, which the US-accreditedCentral European University did not.Michael Ignatieff, the CEU’s president,says it has opened a campus in New Yorkstate, but is still threatened with closure Agovernment spokesman said the threat todepart was “a Soros-style political ploy”

Dublin

Green light for blasphemy:In a decisive

65% to 35% vote in last week’s

referendum, Ireland has decided to abolish

its constitutional ban on blasphemy (see

page 21) The vote is the latest in a series

of plebiscites that have approved major

social changes, including gay marriage and

abortion, in a society once known for its

domination by the Catholic Church In

a separate vote, Ireland re-elected its

president, Michael D Higgins – only the

second time a sitting president has been

challenged for the largely ceremonial post

The race was notable for the presence of

three panellists from Ireland’s version of

the TV show Dragons’ Den on the ballot

paper One, Peter Casey, finished in second

place He surged from 2% in opinion polls

to take 23% of the vote after giving an

interview slamming the status of Irish

Travellers as an official ethnic minority,

insisting they were just “basically people

camping in someone else’s land”

Paris

Blow to Airbnb:A court in Paris has

dealt a potentially devastating blow to the

market for short-term holiday lets in Paris

by evicting the long-term tenant of a flat

in the French capital, and ordering her

to pay her landlord all of the s46,000 she

had earned over the past seven years by

subletting it to tourists on Airbnb The

flat’s owner took her tenant to court after

seeing it listed, without her permission, on

the site last year France is Airbnb’s biggest

national market after the US and, like

other world cities, Paris has taken steps

to limit holiday rentals due to their impact

on the housing market (pushing up prices

for locals) and hotel industry Paris

requires residents who let out their homes

short term to register, and limits them to

a maximum of 120 days of letting a year

So far this year, the city authorities have

issued s1.38m in fines for breaching the

rules, an average fine of s12,000

Rome

Citizens’ anger:

Thousands

of Romansprotestedoutsidecity hall

on Saturdayover thedilapidatedstate of the Italian capital, and the failure

of the Five Star Movement mayor, VirginiaRaggi, to clean it up Under the slogan

Roma dice basta (“Rome says enough”),

residents showed their anger over potholedroads, uncollected rubbish and the wildboars spotted foraging in rubbish heapsacross the city More than 20 buses havecaught fire on Rome’s streets this year(pictured), largely as a result of inadequatemaintenance, and last week an escalatorsped out of control at a metro station,injuring 24 Russian football fans

Istanbul, Turkey

Khashoggi fallout:Turkey and SaudiArabia were at loggerheads this weekover the continuing investigation intoJamal Khashoggi’s murder Saudi Arabia’smost senior prosecutor, Saud al-Mojeb,visited the Istanbul consulate where thejournalist is believed to have been killed,but was denied access to the full dossier

of evidence compiled by the Turkishauthorities The refusal was apparentlydesigned to increase pressure on the Saudicrown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,who is suspected of authorising themurder: Turkey’s President Erdogan toldreporters that it made “no sense to try

to save certain people” The Saudi foreignminister, Adel al-Jubeir, said that theglobal outcry over Khashoggi’s death hadbecome “hysterical” Khashoggi’s fiancée,Hatice Cengiz, has called on PresidentTrump to ensure that justice is done andnot to “pave the way for a cover-up”

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

Oldenburg,Germany

Hospital killings:

At the opening

of the trial ofthe most prolificserial killer inGerman history,the accusedhas admitted tothe murder of

100 patients

Niels Högel, 41, aformer nurse, had already been jailed on six

counts of murder and attempted murder,

but has now confessed to further killings,

prompting a new investigation Prosecutors

at his latest trial say that in each case he

administered a drug that caused cardiac

arrest, and then tried to revive the patient,

hoping to be seen as a hero – but in most

cases he failed The victims’ ages ranged

from 34 to 96, and investigators say he

may have killed more than 200 people

Venice, Italy

Worst flooding for ten years:Anexceptionally high tide, driven by ferociouswinds, left three-quarters of Venice flooded

on Monday, as the water level rose bymore than five feet Even the raised walk-ways erected to deal with the emergencywere submerged, and water reached thecentre of St Mark’s Basilica for only thefifth time in its 900-year history Thedisaster has fuelled controversy over theMose Project, a multibillion-euro system

of underwater barriers designed to protectthe city in extreme weather conditions:

originally scheduled to open in 2014,but still unfinished, it has been dogged

by rising costs and corruption “If everthere was one day it would have beenuseful, it was yesterday,” said Il Gazzettinonewspaper High winds and heavy rainalso wrought havoc in other parts of Italy,with 11 deaths reported In Rome,both the Forum and the Colosseumwere closed on safety grounds

6 NEWS The world at a glance

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

Bruceton Mills, West Virginia

Gangster killed:The notorious Bostonmob boss James “Whitey” Bulger wasfound dead this week in a prison inWest Virginia Bulger, 89, who wasserving a life term, was reported tohave been killed by a fellow inmatewith Mafia ties He’d only beentransferred to the jail, in BrucetonMills, a day earlier Born into anIrish-American family, Bulger wasinvolved in crime from his teens andended up running the powerful Winter Hill gang in the 1970s,

while his activities were covered up by corrupt FBI agents On the

run for 16 years, he was arrested in 2011, and convicted two

years later of racketeering and of involvement in 11 murders

Menlo Park, California

Google payoff:Google gave a $90m exit package to Andy Rubin,

the creator of its operating system Android – while concealing the

misconduct allegation that had led to him being asked to leave,

The New York Times has reported According to the paper, an

employee with whom Rubin had been having an affair accused

him of putting pressure on her to perform a sex act on him in a

hotel in 2013 Google investigated, found the accusations credible

and asked for Rubin’s resignation; he left in 2014 Rubin has

denied the claims Reportedly, he is one of two senior executives

to have left the firm with large pay-offs after being accused of

harassment In a memo to staff last week, Google insisted it was

“dead serious” about workplace harassment and that it had fired

48 people for sexual harassment without giving them payouts

Buenos Aires

Falklands claim:Argentina willtake advantage of Brexit to pushits claim for sovereignty over theFalkland Islands, the country’s foreign minister has said Theislands are recognised as a British overseas territory under theEU’s 2009 Lisbon Treaty; this means that while the UK is in the

EU, other members are obliged, by the bloc’s duty of sincerecooperation, to support its claim to the territory In an interviewwith The Daily Telegraph, Jorge Faurie said that, post-Brexit,Buenos Aires would ask for its claim to be recognised Italy andSpain are believed to be sympathetic to Argentina’s position.Theresa May is due to hold talks with Argentina’s centre-rightpresident, Mauricio Macri, at the G20 summit this month

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Synagogue massacre:Eleven

people were killed at Pittsburgh’s

Tree of Life synagogue last

Saturday, when a gunman

stormed the building shouting “all

Jews must die” It is believed to

have been the deadliest

anti-Semitic attack ever perpetrated in

the US; Pittsburgh’s mayor called

it the “darkest day” in the city’s

history The suspect, Robert

Bowers, 46, was overpowered by police 20 minutes into his

attack An avowed white supremacist, he is believed to have been

behind a slew of anti-Semitic posts on Gab, a social media site

used by white nationalists, one of which accuses Jews of bringing

“evil Muslims” to the US President Trump condemned the

attack, but was criticised for joking at a convention, hours

later, that standing in the rain talking to journalists

about the atrocity had left him with a “bad hair day”

The massacre took place three days after a white

man shot dead two black people in a supermarket in

Kentucky, having first tried and failed to get into a predominantly

African-American church near by “Whites don’t shoot whites,”

Gregory Bush, 51, is reported to have said to a bystander,

moments after he allegedly gunned down his victims

Plantation, Florida

Pipe bomb suspect:The bodybuilder suspected of sending crudepipe bombs to 13 of President Trump’s most prominent criticsand political opponents appeared in court this week, to hear thecharges against him If convicted, Cesar Sayoc, 56, faces up to

48 years in jail He is believed to have put 15 packagescontaining explosives into the mail and is reported to have had

a list of 100 targets (see page 21) On his arrest in Plantation,

Florida, he allegedly admitted sending the packages, but claimedthe pipe bombs would never have gone off However, the director

of the FBI, Christopher Wray, insisted that “these are not hoaxdevices” An obsessive Trump supporter, Sayoc was well known

to the police, having been arrested several times on suspicion of arange of crimes, including grand theft and drug possession

Oaxaca state, Mexico

Caravan still coming:With thousands of migrants still making

their way up through southern Mexico, President Trump this

week ordered that 5,200 troops be deployed to the US border

Last week, he claimed, without evidence, on Twitter that there

were “unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan; on Monday,

he tweeted that “Many Gang Members and some very bad

people” were among the migrants and warned them that “our

Military is waiting for you” Most members of the caravan are

escaping brutal gang violence and grinding poverty in Honduras,

Guatemala and El Salvador (see page 17) This week, as a second,

smaller wave of migrants headed north, a Honduran man was

killed during a violent confrontation with Mexican police on the

Mexico-Guatemala border

NEWS 7

The world at a glance

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

week, six years

after its antiquities

and artefacts were

put into storage as a result of the

encroaching civil war The reopening was

hailed by Syrian officials as a landmark

moment in the return to normal life in the

capital It is “a genuine message that Syria

is still here and her heritage will not be

affected by terrorism,” said the Syrian

culture minister Mohammad al-Ahmad

Separately, the leaders of Russia, Turkey,

France and Germany met in Istanbul to

discuss a postwar constitution for Syria

and the path to peace in Idlib, the last

rebel-held province France’s President

Macron praised the ceasefire negotiated

by Russia and Turkey, but said that all

sides must remain “vigilant”

Beijing

New era for old foes?

Japan’s PM, Shinzo Abe,received an unusuallywarm welcome when hemade a rare trip to Beijingthis week When he lastmet President Xi, in 2014,relations were decidedlyfrosty But this time, as thepair sealed trade dealsworth $18bn, Abe pledged

a “new era” for Japan andChina, while Xi said thatthey must move together

in a “new direction” at atime when “instability anduncertainties” are growing(interpreted as areference to DonaldTrump’sleadership)

Karachi, Pakistan

Taliban leader released:Officials in

Pakistan have confirmed that they have

released from prison a co-founder and

former head of the Taliban, who was

arrested in Karachi eight years ago

following a joint US-Pakistani intelligence

operation Quietly freed from jail last

week, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is

now believed to be back in Afghanistan

His release, along with that of two other

imprisoned senior Taliban, is believed to

be the outcome of the tentative dialogue

currently under way between the Taliban

and the US – and to reflect Pakistan’s

efforts to retain influence over any moves

towards peace US diplomats held a

second round of talks at the Taliban’s

political office in Qatar on 12 October At

the time of his capture, Baradar had been

interested in exploring peace negotiations

Addis Ababa

Gender landmark:

Ethiopian MPshave electedthe country’sfirst femalepresident Theposition is largelyceremonial, butcarries symbolicweight andinfluence

Sahle-Work Zewde, a 68-year-olddiplomat who becomes Africa’s onlyfemale head of state, promised to workfor greater gender equality A weekearlier, the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed,had filled half his new cabinet withwomen On Twitter, his chief of staff saidhaving a female head of state “normaliseswomen as decision-makers in public life”

Jakarta

Deadly crash:A Boeing 737-Max 8passenger plane crashed into the seashortly after take-off from the Indonesiancapital, Jakarta, on Monday – killing all

189 people on board Lion Air flightJT610 had been airborne for 13 minuteswhen it plunged into the sea The pilot hadasked to return to Jakarta airport beforethe disaster, suggesting a massive technicalfailure might have been the cause of thecrash However, the single-aisle jet –Boeing’s bestselling commercial aircraft– was almost brand new: it had only been

in operation since 15 August

Colombo

Return of Rajapaksa:Sri Lanka was plunged intocrisis last Friday when the country’s president,Maithripala Sirisena, announced live on TV that

he had dismissed the elected prime minister,Ranil Wickremesinghe, and appointed in his placethe “strongman” ruler who he himself replaced

Mahinda Rajapaksa (pictured) was president ofSri Lanka from 2005 to 2015 His governmentwas accused of corruption and human rights abuses, especially against the Tamilminority, and of forging excessively close ties to China

This week both Wickremesinghe, 69, and Rajapaksa, 72, were insisting that theywere the legitimate PM Rajapaksa was sworn in, took control of the PM’s office andbegan appointing a cabinet But Wickremesinghe continued to occupy his officialresidence, in Colombo, and on Tuesday, tens of thousands of his supporters gatheredoutside to protest against what some are calling a “constitutional coup” He argues hecan only be dismissed if he loses the support of parliament; but Sirisena has suspendedparliament until 16 November The speaker of the parliament has warned that if MPsare not able to resolve the issue swiftly, there will be a “bloodbath” on the streets

8 NEWS People

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

A groundbreaking kiss

The first black actor to have

won an Oscar, an Emmy and a

Tony, Viola Davis has been in

some 75 films – but it’s only

now, at 53, that she has been

given a lead role in a major

movie, says Benjamin Lee in

The Guardian An adaptation

of Lynda La Plante’s 1983

miniseries, Steve McQueen’s

Widows opens with her lying

in bed, kissing her on-screen

husband, Liam Neeson A

married couple kissing is not

remarkable, but for Davis, the

scene is groundbreaking “This

is something you’ll not see this

year, last year, the year before

that,” she says “That is, a

dark-skinned woman of

colour, at 53 years old, kissing

Liam Neeson Not just kissing

a white man,” she adds, “Liam

Neeson, a hunk And kissing

him sexually, romantically.”

Widows is about the wives

of a group of career criminals

who continue their husbands’

work after the men are killed

The cast is racially diverse, but

their race is incidental – which,

she says, is another thing that

makes the film unusual “I

always say that one thing

missing in cinema is that regular

black woman Not anyone

didactic, or whose sole purpose

in the narrative is to illustrate

some social abnormality

There’s no meaning behind it,

other than she is just there.”

Davis says she’d like to play

the sort of roles Jane Fonda

and Meryl Streep have been

offered “I would love to have

a black female Kramer, or

Annie Hall But who’s gonna

write it, who’s gonna produce

it, who’s gonna see it, againand again and again?”

Grisham’s racist pastJohn Grisham is a Democratand a liberal, but as the son of

a Mississippi cotton farmer hewas brought up to be a racist

“It was terrible,” he told JimWhite in The Mail on Sunday

“Lynching was still common

Through church, school andwhat was said at home, wewere taught that the black manwould always be kept in hisplace.” His school was the last

in the US to desegregate: blackchildren weren’t admitted until

1970 – and even then it wasfiercely resisted “It was almostdone at federal gunpoint: therewas tremendous tension andviolence I remember seeingblack kids being bussed underarmed guard All our lives wewere taught this would neverhappen It had: suddenly andforcibly Yet I recall sitting inthe locker room a few monthslater with the black guys onthe football team thinking:

‘Why was this so difficult?’”

Grisham, 63, can’t understandwhy some people are nostalgicfor the South of that era: all hewanted to do was to get away

He practised law; then, toboost his income, he beganwriting Huge sellers, his booksare plot-driven and fast-paced

“With Ian McEwan or John leCarré, I’ll read a paragraphand think, that’s beautiful I’m

so envious of writers who havesuch a command of language

But I know I can’t match it.”

Oddly, it was “bad writerswho inspired me I thought:

surely I can beat that.”

In his days as an international cricketer, Andrew “Freddie” Flintoffalways seemed irrepressible, says Decca Aitkenhead in The SundayTimes In reality, he was a bulimic depressive who felt he was beingidolised for qualities he didn’t have; even when England won TheAshes, he struggled with praise “It’s exhausting, because you’retrying to live up to this idea people have of you With cricket, thatfeeling of euphoria was always short-lived I found it all a bitembarrassing.” Alcohol provided an escape from the awkwardnesshe’d felt ever since his schooldays: teased at his comprehensive forliking cricket, he felt out of his depth playing with boys from posherbackgrounds; picked by Lancashire while still an adolescent, hehated sharing a dressing room with grown men It was only when

he made a documentary about sportsmen and their demons that heaccepted that he had mental health problems of his own Flintoff,

40, now takes antidepressants and sees a therapist, but he neverknows what will trigger his black mood “It can be just a word: it’snever anything big You know it’s happening and there’s very littleyou can do It’s like the shutters are coming down: you see theworld going on around you and you just can’t get involved Thenpeople will come round and have the most trivial conversation – andI’ll think they’re geniuses, because I can’t get a thought in my head.”

Viewpoint:

No pianos please

“The actor Mark Gatiss posted a video

of someone playing music in publiclast week and remarked that pianos inrailway stations – including St Pancras,Leeds and Dundee – are ‘such a simple,life-enhancing joy’ I’m afraid Ican’t get on board with it Suchperformances are fundamentallyattention-seeking, like extravagantpublic marriage proposals Worst ofall, there’s the inherent whimsy of itall, making me feel I’m trapped inside

a John Lewis Christmas advert

Richard Curtis is the one I blame themost He popularised the idea that weuptight Brits have an inner performeraching to escape Can we please return

to playing pianos in private?”

Sathnam Sanghera in The Times

Farewell

Wanda Ferragamo, entrepreneur who grew her family shoe firm into

a global brand, died

19 October, aged 96 Aubrey Manning, zoologist, lecturer and broadcaster who campaigned for human population control, died

20 October, aged 88 Alexander McLeish, RAF pilot who flew during WWII, died

26 August, aged 98 Vichai

Srivaddhanaprabha, businessman and owner

of Leicester City FC, died

27 October, aged 60.

Book: The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Luxury: a feather pillow * Choice if allowed only one record

Castaway of the week

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

businesswoman and CEO of Ann Summers, Jacqueline Gold

1 Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Robert Hazard, performed by

Cyndi Lauper

2 I Feel Love by Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte,

performed by Donna Summer

3 I Was Made for Lovin’ You by Paul Stanley, Vini Poncia and

Desmond Child, performed by Kiss

4 Tell It to My Heart by Seth Swirsky and Ernie Gold, performed

by Taylor Dayne

5 My Love Is Your Love by Wyclef Jean and Jerry Duplessis,

performed by Whitney Houston

6 Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) by Cristiano Spiller,

Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Rob Davis, performed by Spiller

and Sophie Ellis-Bextor

7* Wishing on a Star by Billie Rae Calvin, performed by Rose Royce

8 Uptown Funk! by Mark Ronson, Jeff Bhasker, Bruno Mars,

Philip Lawrence, Devon Gallaspy and Nicholaus Williams,

performed by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars

Say Hello to the Age of Conversation

Like 91% of consumers, Phil is more likely

to shop with brands who remember him.*

A conversation on Messenger means your

business can be more personalised.

fb.me/messengerbusiness

© 2018 Facebook, Inc The Messenger logo is a trademark of Facebook All Rights Reserved.

* “Making it Personal” by Accenture Interactive (survey of 8,000 consumers in CA, DE, ES, FR, GB, IT,

SE and the US), Nov 2017.

It’s our big anniversary weekend You know we like a beach view Show me hotels on Messenger?

10 NEWS

29 March 2019 That is the date

– exactly two years after a letter

was sent to European Council

president Donald Tusk (right),

notifying him of Britain’s intention

to withdraw – on which the UK is

set to leave the European Union

The assumption has been that

by that date, Michel Barnier, the

EU’s chief negotiator, would have

negotiated a withdrawal agreement

with the UK That would then need

to be signed off by the European

Parliament and a supermajority

(72% of the 27 states) in the

European Council (made up of the

leaders of EU member states)

A withdrawal agreement would, however, only be the first step

The EU has always insisted that three issues – the rights of British

and EU citizens after Brexit; the UK’s “divorce bill” from Brussels;

and the situation of Northern Ireland – had to be settled before

negotiations on Britain’s futurerelationship with the EU couldbegin In December 2017, thatpoint was reached: the firsttwo issues were settled, anddifferences over the NorthernIreland issue were smoothedover when Britain accepted acompromise – the “backstop”(see box) This March, the twosides also agreed a transitionperiod, running from March

2019 until the end of 2020,during which Britain’srelationship with the EU wouldremain effectively unchanged.Since then, progress has beenpainfully slow The Irish border remains a stubborn stickingpoint The only deal anywhere near the table – the Chequersplan – is unpopular in Westminster and in Brussels Every option,from staying in the EU to “no deal”, is still up for grabs

Briefing Brexit: the choices we face

What does it involve?

This is the option that preserves the closest possible trading

relationship with the EU without being part of its political union

It’s modelled on the compromise Norway made in 1994 after its

bitter referendum on EU membership, in which 52% voted “out”

and 48% “in” So rather than join the EU, Norway remained

a member of the newly created European Economic Area

(EEA), and thereby of the EU’s single market but not

its customs union (see box) It has left Norway free

to decide its home affairs, farm and fisheries policies,

and to negotiate trade deals with non-EU nations

Under this model, Britain would be able to sell most

goods and services to EU states without paying

import taxes (tariffs) But it would have to conform

to EU regulations on goods and services, and to its four

freedoms (on the movement of goods, services, capital and people)

Pros and cons of the Norway option

It carries the least risk of economic upheaval, giving us almost the

same level of uninterrupted trade with the EU as today – notably

in the crucial services sector But it would also mean the UK

having to pay into the EU budget and accepting swathes of EU

rules on which it had no say Like Norway, we’d also have to

accept EU migration; the EEA agreement does allow some latitude

in this area, but the extent is contested Besides, the Norway tag

conceals two very different options Barnier has expressed support

for “Norway plus”, which means “being part of the single market

plus a customs union”: that would ensure frictionless EU borders,

but would stop us from trading freely with the rest of the world

Conversely, “Norway minus” – leaving the customs union –

would mean trouble at the borders, particularly the Irish border

Who supports this option?

Not Theresa May, whose Lancaster House speech last year stated

that the UK would leave the single market and the customs union

Many Brexiteers dismiss it as “Brino” (Brexit in name only) But

some veteran Eurosceptics support it, arguing that at least it offers

a plan for freeing the UK from the EU; it has also been mooted as

a temporary solution while a trade deal is concluded Whether

Brussels or indeed the EEA would accept that is less clear

What does it involve?

A fudge concocted by May and agreed by her Cabinet on a hotFriday in July at the PM’s official country residence, the Chequersplan means going one step further than the Norway model Itwould end the free movement of EU citizens, and have Britainleave the EU customs union and the single market for services– but keep it in a single market for goods That would entailaccepting Brussels’ rules and standards for all goods andagricultural products It would enable us to make our owntrade deals with countries outside the EU, but to do so, acomplicated new customs system would be required: UK customswould apply domestic tariffs for goods intended for the UK, butcharge EU tariffs for goods passing through Britain to the EU.Pros and cons of Chequers

It would give us some degree of independence, while preservingfrictionless trade – a major concern for British business, fromretailers importing fresh food, to car manufacturers who rely onthe timely delivery of parts using supply chains that stretch acrossEurope But like “Norway”, it involves indefinitely accepting EUregulations – albeit only those covering goods – while having nosay in Brussels The EU, for its part, has flatly rejected the plan:

to accept a single market membership for goods, but not services,capital or people, it says, would undermine the single market andencourage EU members to “cherry pick” rights and obligations; it

is all or nothing Barnier also thinks the customs bureaucracyinvolved would be “insane” Nor is he convinced it

can achieve one of its main objectives – obviatingthe need for a hard border in Ireland

Who supports it?

“It’s not perfect, but business can work withthis,” says the CBI, the UK voice of business

But to Brussels and the Eurosceptic wing of theTory party, it is unacceptable Boris Johnson,who along with David Davis resigned over theplan, has called it “a moral and intellectual humiliation for thiscountry” But if – a big if – Brussels were to agree to a versionthat didn’t involve too many further concessions, May might get itthrough Parliament with the backing of Labour rebels

Option 1 The Norway model Option 2 The Chequers plan

Brexit, as Danny Dyer put it, is a mad riddle no one really understands; but there are four main models over which British politics is tearing itself apart If a deal can be made, it will be some variant of any of the first three If not, it’s no deal The clock is ticking

NEWS 11

Briefing

Northern Ireland and the “backstop”

Europe and Britain are united in their

determination not to impose a hard

border in Ireland – a border once

monitored, during the Troubles, by

customs officials and security forces

But if, after Brexit, Northern Ireland and

the Republic end up with

different customs rules and

product standards, goods

passing between will have

to be monitored somewhere

– or the EU’s single market

could be undermined

Last December, to keep

negotiations going, May

agreed to the “backstop”:

that “in the absence of agreed solutions”,

Northern Ireland, post Brexit, would stay

fully aligned with the rules of the EU

customs union and its single market

There is, as yet, no sign of such an agreed

solution The EU argues that to keep

the Irish border open would require a

customs border between Northern Ireland

and mainland Britain – effectively hiving

it off from the UK This is anathema to

May’s government, and to the DemocraticUnionists, the Tories’ allies in Parliament,led by Arlene Foster (pictured) It wouldcross her “blood red lines”, she said The

UK believes that there are technologicalsolutions to the border issue: Switzerland

and Norway, for instance,have land borders with the

EU that allow relativelyfrictionless trade Failingthat, it has proposed its ownbackstop: that the UK as awhole should – for a limitedtime – remain inside theEU’s regulatory regime Butsince that only kicks the candown the road, Brussels has rejected this,demanding “a backstop to the backstop”;

Tory Brexiteers, for their part, fear thiscould become a permanent arrangement

Many Brexiteers accuse Brussels of usingthe Irish border as a ploy to ensure thatthe UK stays inside the EU’s regime

Brussels insists the UK simply isn’t facingfacts or offering solutions Either way, theissue has snarled up the entire process

What does it involve?

If May won’t budge on her Lancaster House “red lines” – the

UK is to be outside the single market and the customs union – the

only viable option, says Brussels, would be a free-trade agreement

like Canada’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

(Ceta) with the EU This would ensure that nearly all goods could

be imported tariff-free, and non-tariff barriers (regulatory checks,

quota controls) would be kept to a minimum It would also put

an end to budget payments to the EU and free movement for EU

citizens The “plus” signals that the UK deal would go further

than the agreement with Canada, though it’s unclear how far: it

might involve making it easier for the UK to sell services to the EU

and forging other joint arrangements – on security, for example

Pros and cons of Canada plus

To many Brexiteers it represents freedom – a clean break with

Brussels The European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over

British affairs would end; EU immigration would once

again be a matter for Parliament And we’d have

complete freedom to trade freely with the world

But most economists think it would impose a heavy

cost There’d have to be new customs and “rules of

origin” checks on goods moving over the borders:

even small amounts of additional border formalities

would create long queues and uncertainty in ports

used for UK-EU trade, notably Dover And it would

make the need for some sort of controls at the Irish border almost

inevitable Besides, free-trade deals also take years to negotiate:

Ceta took seven years, though presumably a UK deal would be

easier, because British and EU regulations are currently identical

Who supports Canada plus?

Many Tory Brexiteers, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Johnson and

Davis, who pushed hard but unsuccessfully for Canada plus when

he was Brexit Secretary The EU has, in principle, always been

open to such an agreement – but, again, it’s subject to a satisfactory

resolution on the Irish border The CBI is dead against it: “It

would introduce friction at borders, it would not solve the Irish

border, it would damage the supply chains on which thousands

and thousands of jobs depend.” And at the moment, there is

nothing like a majority in support of it in the Commons

What does it involve?

Also known as the “cliff edge”, it would be thevery hardest of Brexits: leaving the structures

of the EU without any deal to replace them Inpractice, the term covers quite a few differentscenarios, all the way from utter chaos – withplanes unable to fly between Britain and Europe,British meat prevented from entering Europe,medicine shortages and the Channel ports gridlocked – to

a basic but more orderly contingency plan to move UK-EU trade

to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules Either way, there’d beimmediate and extensive border checks and heavy tariffs on somegoods For example, on WTO terms, cars and car parts would face10% duties every time they cross the border Agricultural tariffswould be significantly higher, up to some 35% for dairy products.Pros and cons of no deal

Most commentators think it would be a catastrophe for Britainand Europe, with disastrous effects on supply chains, trade andtransport Christine Lagarde, head of the International MonetaryFund, warned last month that a “disorderly” exit from the EUwould send the UK into recession The IMF says it would cost

us about 4% of GDP in the long term And Brexiteers fear that itcould trigger a political crisis that would end with Britain staying

in the EU But looking on the bright side, the average WTO tarifffor EU imports is in general not particularly high (2.6% for non-agricultural products) and, in the absence of a deal, Britainprobably wouldn’t have to pay its EU divorce bill, which wouldgive it £39bn to offset the negative economic effects

Who supports it?

Almost no one actively seeks it, but some claim it’s far preferable

to agreeing punitive “Carthaginian terms” with the EU The moreswashbuckling Brexiteers claim that, free from Brussels’ control,the UK could unilaterally slash tariffs and taxes, and embark on

a bright Singapore-type future However, Toyota recently warnedthat if the firm’s sizeable investment in the UK is to continue, a nodeal scenario must be avoided On a more calming note, WTOdirector general Roberto Azevêdo declared in June that no dealwouldn’t create “a situation where all trade stops” Then again,

he added, “it’s not going to be a walk in the park”

Option 3 Canada plus Option 4 No deal

ocked – toove UK-EU trade

make the need fo

The EU’s customs union is an agreementbetween all EU nations to abolishcustoms controls and tariffs on goodscrossing their shared borders To makethat workable, all EU member stateshave to apply common custom tariffs onall goods imported from outside the bloc– about 10% on cars from Korea or the

US for example Such tariffs are collected

by each nation, but paid on to the EU.Clearly a nation can’t strike free-tradedeals with outside countries and remaininside a customs union: if a post-BrexitBritain were free to buy cheap US chicken

or Chinese steel, it could then re-exportthem (or products made from them) tothe EU, and undercut local producers.That is why goods entering the EU fromNorway (which is outside the customsunion) have to be checked to make surethey comply with “rules of origin” ButBritain is unlikely to accept remaininginside the customs union yet beingoutside the EU – as Turkey is – because

it would mean surrendering trade policy

to Brussels, while having no say in it

The aim of a customs union

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

Rated ‘Excellent’

NEWS 13

Best articles: Britain

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

The spies who

at the West, while retaining a flimsy cover of deniability WhenSoviet spies were told to disrupt the 1983 British general election

by planting fake news, they did so as discreetly as possible Bycontrast, the Russian attack on the US presidential election wasblatant, but deniable The pattern is clear: “deny, confuse, self-contradict, brazen it out” And be sure the perpetrators disappear

Viewing porn is now so routine some men do it anywhere Aparliamentary committee has concluded that porn is as damaging

to public health as smoking But if anything, it’s worse: it has

“stunted the emotional well-being of an entire generation”

Teenagers blithely send sexts; many men used to hardcore videosfind they can’t perform in the real world; sexual harassment hasbecome increasingly common Meanwhile, established norms areallowed to fray: Sainsbury’s has just announced that it’s going tolaunch a line of sex toys Yet there’s not much Parliament can do,because most hardcore videos are “streamed from abroad” Thetide will only be stemmed when the digital media giants wake up

to their responsibilities and block porn “I won’t hold my breath.”

Slow growth; stagnant incomes; spiralling public debt as the cost

of caring for an ageing electorate rises; public anger at uncontrolledimmigration: this seems to be the inescapable fate of Western

democracies, says The Economist Yet one country has escaped it:

Australia Its overall growth in the past 27 years has been almostthree times that of Germany and – almost uniquely – recession-free; its median income has risen four times faster than that ofthe US A key factor in this success has been sound policymaking

In 1991, Australia – under a Labor government – reformed itshealthcare and pensions systems by requiring the middle class topay more of its own way As a result, the share of GDP that thestate spends on pensions is half the OECD average Its immigra-tion policy is no less striking: to reassure voters, it takes a toughline on illegals, but it has made entry easy for bona fide applicants

Today about 29% of its inhabitants were born in another country– twice the proportion in the US An affordable welfare state;

rising incomes; popular support for mass immigration: shouldn’tmore of our policymakers be looking towards Australia?

It really hurts

when they walk

out that door

Joanna Moorhead

The Guardian

A Russian scientiststationed in Antarcticaplunged a kitchen knifeinto a colleague because –it’s alleged – he was fed upwith the man telling him theendings of books he wasreading Sergey Savitsky, 55,had spent six months at theisolated BellingshausenStation on King George Islandwith Oleg Beloguzov, 52,before the reportedly alcohol-fuelled altercation Beloguzovwas evacuated to Chile with

a chest injury, but is notbelieved to be in danger.Savitsky, who has beencharged with attemptedmurder, has expressedremorse over the attack

Pope Francis has reportedly given his blessing to a Catholic version of Pokémon

Go, the mobile gaming

sensation Follow JC Go uses similar GPS and augmented reality technology, but rather than tracking Pokémon, it allows players to capture saints and biblical characters, who then join their

“evangelisation team” One reviewer, JR SV, wrote: “I feel happy to follow the path of the Lord from my smartphone.”

The “worst robbers in Belgium” were tricked by a shopkeeper into returning

to his business so that police could arrest them The owner

of the e-cigarette shop in Charleroi, Belgium, identified

as Didier, was confronted by six robbers at about 3pm “I told them that 3pm is not the best time to hold up a store,”

he said He convinced them

to come back later, promising them s2,000-s3,000 They came again at 5.30pm, but Didier told them it wasn’t yet closing time When they returned at 6:30pm, the police were in the shop, ready to catch them.

IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids

My heart goes out to Gordon Ramsay, says Joanna Moorhead

It was a question he wasn’t expecting How was he dealing,

James Corden asked him on The Late Late Show last week, with

his son’s departure to the University of Exeter? “Gutted,” wasthe reply In a confession of pure anguish, the legendary tough guyadmitted he had gone into 18-year-old Jack’s bedroom and put

on a pair of pants lying in Jack’s drawer I know the feeling Myeldest left home eight years ago, but I still go into her bedroom,look at her books and squirt some perfume from the bottle on herdressing table “It is the fundamental paradox of parenthood.”

We bring them up to be self-sufficient The better they leave andenjoy an independent life, the more we congratulate ourselves on

a job well done; yet the more it hurts and the more redundant wefeel I still recall the first time I saw my daughter off at the airport:

she walked away at the security gates and didn’t look back once

“I took it as a good sign, but it broke my heart.” Leaving home is

a big moment for children; for parents, facing up to the sadnessthat they’re not around any more, it’s a hugely poignant one

14 NEWS Best articles: Europe

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

The oligarchs

desperate to

serve Putin

The Moscow Times

After a brief “civilising process” in the early 2000s, Russia is returning to the bad old days of the1990s, when contract killings and the theft of assets were “acceptable business tactics” And it isoligarchs like Yevgeny Prigozhin who are responsible for the return of these dirty habits, saysMark Galeotti Prigozhin is typical of a new breed of opportunist, a businessman whose fortunedepends on his willingness to do the Kremlin’s bidding He built a catering empire thanks to his links

to Vladimir Putin, who often visited his Moscow restaurant Next he set up a troll factory to enablePutin to influence public opinion in Russia and overseas; then he helped Putin’s military adventure inSyria by setting up a private company, Wagner, reportedly a civilian front for mercenaries Men likePrigozhin are invulnerable when their stars are in the ascendant But as uncertainties mount – overgeopolitics, the economy, Putin’s future – they feel pressure to make money and settle feuds beforetheir luck runs out Desperate to retain favour, they push the Kremlin’s agenda It is “Putin’s needylittle helpers” who are to blame for the growing incivility of Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.There are more imaginative ways to end plastics pollution than the ban passed by the EuropeanParliament last week, says Frank-Thomas Wenzel MEPs voted to outlaw the sale and manufacture

of drinking straws, cotton swabs and other such items from 2021 But even if the restrictions arerigorously enforced, they can’t help much, because Europeans aren’t the ones mainly responsible.Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research have shown that 90% of the plasticwaste polluting the oceans originates from large river systems in Asia and Africa – such as theMekong, Ganges, Nile and Yangtze – which are used as waste dumps by the hundreds of millions

of people who live on their banks Far better to fund European experts to work with governments

in Vietnam, China and elsewhere to develop modern collection and recycling systems – to help themcopy the deposit system for reusable bottles, pioneered in Germany, that has achieved a near-100%return rate, or to set up plastic waste incineration plants like those found across Germany If the EUhad the nerve to push for “courageous” initiatives along these lines, it could make a real difference

One might have laughed at the farcical

incident in the European Parliament

last week were it not so serious, said

Cécile Ducourtieux and Jérôme

Gautheret inLe Monde (Paris)

Euro-pean commissioner Pierre Moscovici

had just announced his unprecedented

decision to reject the deficit-busting

budget proposed by Italy’s government,

when Angelo Ciocca, a right-wing

Italian MEP, crept up behind him,

took off a shoe and slammed it down

on Moscovici’s notes “I trampled –

with a sole made in Italy – the

moun-tain of lies written against our nation,”

boasted Ciocca “These Euroimbeciles

have to understand that Italy deserves respect.” It’s hardly what

Moscovici meant when he spoke of Rome and Brussels engaging

in dialogue to resolve the impasse

Since the far-right League and populist Five Star Movement

coalition took office in June, even the mildest reproofs from

Brussels are met with fury, said Ulrich Ladurner inDie Zeit

(Hamburg) The loudest barks come from the League’s leader,

Matteo Salvini – the interior minister and the government’s

driving force Italians hear how he “steamrolls” leaders like

Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron But how can officials

negotiate with politicians who can’t talk without “foaming”?

Optimists point out that some Greek politicians also cursed the

Eurocrats, but submitted in the end Italy, however, is different

The eurozone’s third-largest economy,it’s too big to rescue, and its govern-ment is ruthless in exploiting that Butthe budget is a “ramshackle” mess,said Alessandro Sallusti inIl Giornale(Milan) The northern small-businessowners and anti-immigrant nationalistswho vote for the League were promisedtax cuts; Five Star voters expect higherwelfare spending, much of which will

go to immigrants No government cansatisfy such conflicting goals withoutmassive spending

But EU nations that get into financialdifficulties usually play for time, saidAndreas Schnauder inDer Standard (Vienna) Italy’s behaviour– open defiance of budget rules, spiky complaints about EU

“enslavement” and “market terrorism” – is quite new Yet thesituation is too explosive for this sort of carry-on Italy’s debt,

at s2.3trn, is one of the highest in Europe in cash terms, and thegovernment plans to borrow more to service it But the marketshave been pounding Italy as investors take fright, said RachelDonadio inThe Atlantic (Washington DC), and when theItalian public sees borrowing “spreads” expanding to unsustain-able levels, they’ll feel less like applauding the “Italy is a victim”rhetoric of men like Salvini These politicians can’t step backfor fear of losing face, but they must be “scared to death”.Whether this ends in the “usual European political theatrics” or

a “genuine clash that could reshape Europe”, no one can foretell

Salvini: the driving force of Italy’s truculence

Italy openly defies Brussels in budget battle

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NEWS 17

Best articles: International

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

a welcoming attitude to immigrants and a somewhat “lax record of fighting financial crime”.Thanks to the “tidal wave of Chinese cash”, the city is now groaning with luxury shops Propertyprices have gone through the roof: the average cost of a detached house in Vancouver has tripledsince 2005 But this has led to growing anger among younger voters who have been priced out

of the market As neighbourhoods have emptied of long-term residents, Vancouver has come

“to resemble a rainy Monaco, albeit one with far better dim sum” British Columbia’s left-leaninggovernment has set out to curb the influx of Chinese cash by hiking taxes and tightening tran-sparency rules, but change will be difficult given how reliant the city’s economy has become onthis source of money “Vancouver was perhaps the first major Western city to experience the fullforce of Chinese capital Soon, it could be the first to learn what happens when you try to stop it.”

“whopping” $15bn – eight times more than originally planned? Absolutely not The bridge servesthree centres, two of which are already “highly developed and too crowded to allow any moretraffic”, and, in any case, it will shortly be made all but redundant by the Shenzhen-ZhongshanBridge, due to open in 2024 further up the Pearl River At that point, the structure’s 26-mile-longexpressway will be ideal for staging marathons, but little else The $15bn would have been far betterspent on more modest, and useful, improvements to Hong Kong’s infrastructure, such as footbridges,flyovers and tunnels, to help people get around the congested, multilevel city Hong Kong needs

“local, cost-effective improvements for the many, not monuments to the egos of the few”

CANADA

HONG KONG

Wild-eyed panic That seems to

be America’s standard response

to every challenge these days,

said Mona Charen inNational

Review Just witness the

“hyperventilation” last week

over the news that a “ragtag”

column of up to 7,000 would-be

immigrants was marching towards

the US border from Honduras

This is not the first such caravan

A similar 1,500-strong group

embarked on the same journey in

April Only 400 of those would-be

immigrants actually got as far as

the US border and requested

asylum President Trump has

nevertheless declared the new

caravan – which is still 900 miles away from the US border in

Mexico, and is travelling at all of about 3mph – a “national

emergency” It’s an “assault on our country”, he says, that

threatens the “safety of every single American” He claims, on

no apparent basis, that there are “unknown Middle Easterners”

in the group You’d never guess from this fuss that annual

illegal border crossings are “at a 40-year low”

There isn’t a “crisis of numbers today so much as a crisis of

resources”, said Dara Lind onVox America’s border policy

is geared towards catching and deporting young Mexican men

who try to cross the border illegally for work But over recent

years, the real pressure on the border has come from families

with children fleeing extreme poverty and gang violence in the

Northern Triangle of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras

and El Salvador Processing these complex asylum claims takes

time and has led to large backlogs Working out which of the

people in the latest caravan can claim a “credible fear” of

persecution, and which are merely looking for a better life, will

be a headache In the meantime, though, footage of this mass

of people pressing towards the US is a boon for Trump as he

campaigns for next week’s midterm elections In Trump’s first

TV ad of the presidential primary in 2015, he used an image

of a horde of supposedly US-bound immigrants – fact-checkers

subsequently revealed that the picture had in fact been taken in

Morocco But now he “has theimage he wanted all along”

“Trump has quite literally betthe house on anti-immigrantfearmongering,” said León Krauze

onSlate He has no doubtbeen encouraged in this by theknowledge that an “astounding75% of potential Republicanvoters consider illegal immigration

to be a very big problem forthe US” It’s a crucial swingissue, said Fareed Zakaria in

The Washington Post A study

by the Democracy Fund foundthat voters who switched fromBarack Obama to Trump in

2016 agreed with the Democrats on most economic issues,but disagreed with the party on immigration and other culturalmatters Trump himself has admitted that there’s no evidence tosupport his “Middle Easterners” claim, but he knows the moreattention the media give to this story, the more he benefits.Trump is wrong to inflame and exploit fear of immigrants,said Megan McArdle in the same paper, but Democrats arealso wrong if they think they can get away with simplycondemning his unsubstantiated claims and then “hastilychanging the subject” For even a caravan made up of

“nothing but decent, hard-working people” still raises bigquestions There are billions of such people in the world, butany sane immigration policy must recognise that the number

of immigrants America can accept is finite We have to defendour borders, agreed David Frum inThe Atlantic A 2013 surveyfound that 58% of Salvadorians would move to the US if theycould More than 60% of the population of Honduras lives

in poverty, as does nearly the same proportion in Guatemala.Yet in response to Trump’s provocations, liberals increasinglyargue that any form of border enforcement is “inherentlyillegitimate, and usually racist too” That attitude only furtherempowers a budding authoritarian like Trump “If liberalsinsist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters willhire fascists to do the job liberals will not do.”

The migrant caravan Trump calls a “national emergency”

The Honduran caravan makes its way through Mexico

NEWS 19

Health & Science

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

What the scientists are saying…

Plastics in the body

Scientists have obtained the

first clear evidence that plastic is

finding its way into the human

body For the pilot study,

researchers at the Medical

University of Vienna recruited

eight adults from across Europe

and Asia, and asked them to

supply stool samples along with

a record of what they’d been

eating Every sample was found

to contain plastics, including

nine of the ten most common

types Microplastics – pieces

less than 5mm in diameter –

have previously been found

not only in oceans and in the

air, but also in many packaged

foods, including bottled water

and honey “This confirms

what we’ve long suspected, that plastics

ultimately reach the human gut,” said

Dr Philipp Schwabl, who led the research On

its own, the presence of microplastic particles

in the digestive system is not thought to pose a

serious health risk, though there is concern that

chemicals could leach out of the plastic as it

progresses through the gut The bigger fear is

that plastic nanofibres could be being absorbed

through the walls of the intestine, making their

way into the blood supply and accumulating

in other organs, a phenomenon that has been

observed in animals The team now wants to

carry out a larger study to investigate whether,

and to what extent, this is occurring in humans

Why being tall can lead to cancer

Tall people are known to have a greater risk of

some types of cancer – and it’s probably because

of all the extra cells in their bodies, new research

suggests Past studies have found that for every

ten centimetres of height, a person’s risk of

developing most types of cancer goes up by

about 10% Scientists have proposed various

explanations for this, including that hormones

that promote growth in childhood also increase

the risk of cancer later on But Professor Leonard

Nunney, of the University of California,

Riverside, believes it’s simplerthan that: tall people tend tohave larger bodies, so they havemore cells in which mutationscan occur For his research,

he compared the correlationbetween height and increasedcancer risk revealed byprevious studies with computer-generated predictions of riskbased on a body’s number ofcells, and found that the twomatched perfectly In somecases, the link could be masked

by other drivers of cancer, such

as HPV infection, he says Butheight is still important

“Whether that comes from

a better diet or the fact thatyour parents happen to be talldoesn’t matter it is purely [the]

number of cells, however that came about.”

High rates of a silent killer

Rates of death from sepsis are five times higher

in Britain than in Europe’s best-performingcountry, Finland, an analysis by Imperial CollegeLondon has revealed Known as the “silentkiller”, because it is so hard to spot, sepsis,

or blood poisoning, kills 40,000 people in the

UK each year Britain’s sepsis mortality rate hasgradually decreased over the past three decades,falling from 40 to 35 deaths per 100,000women, and from 49 to 40 deaths per 100,000men Yet other countries have had more rapiddeclines: Finland, which once had similar rates

to Britain, had a rate of 6.5 deaths per 100,000women in 2014, and 10 per 100,000 men Earlydiagnosis of sepsis is critical, but sepsis is hard tospot because it often appears when people are illwith other conditions; symptoms to look out forinclude slurred speech, mottled skin, severebreathlessness, extreme shivering, passing nourine in a day and the feeling that you’re going

to die In children, add skin that is abnormallycold, a rash that doesn’t fade on being pressed,fever, skin colour changes, difficulty waking andlethargy If you notice any of these, call a doctorand ask: could it be sepsis?

Is his high cell count a risk?

The New Caledonian crow is already famed for its ability

to make tools, by, for instance, fashioning twigs into

hooks Now a new element can be added to its skill set:

making tools from multiple components Researchers at

the University of Oxford presented eight crows with a

“puzzle box” with some food out of reach within it The

crows were initially given long sticks and quickly learnt

how to use these to manoeuvre the food to an opening

on the box’s side Then, they were given sticks that were

too short to reach the food, but which could be slotted

together (because some were hollow) to create a longer

rod Four of the crows managed to insert one stick into

another, and used the extended pole to dislodge the food

Inventing novel tools to solve a given problem is a complex skill, because it requires anticipating

the properties of as yet unseen objects Apes are the only other non-human animal known to

possess the skill, which human children acquire at about the age of five What was particularly

remarkable was that the crows received no assistance with the task “They figured it out by

themselves,” said Dr Auguste von Bayern, the study’s lead author

Who dies

in driverless car crashes?

If your car was in anaccident, would you prefer

it to mow down an oldman or a child? Kill fourpedestrians or swerve into

a wall, killing you? Ifyou’re driving, you makethat split-second moraldecision; in an era of self-driving cars, engineerswill have to programmecomputers to do so Nowpsychologists have tried toget a sense of the public’smoral preferences in suchcases, through an onlinesurvey in which 40 millionpeople in 223 countriesanswered a version of thefamous trolley problem:would you divert a tram

to kill one person, or leave

it alone to kill four?

It seems we are generallyagreed that cars should aim

to save the largest number

of lives, prioritising theyoung and valuing humansover animals However, inFrance and Latin America,there is a preference forsaving women over men,and in some countriesthere is a preferencefor saving law-abidingpedestrians overjaywalkers The MoralMachine project alsofound evidence of somecontroversial preferences:overweight people were20% more likely to bechosen to die than those

of a healthy weight, andhomeless people were40% more likely to diethan executives

As the psychologists behindthe project note, cars willonly rarely have to makelife or death decisions –but they will often have

to decide how to distributerisk: for instance, in lines

of heavy traffic, shouldthey edge closer to thebicycle on their left or thetruck on their right? Ifmillions of cars areprogrammed to get closer

to bicycles, that will, overtime, lead to more cyclistsbeing involved in accidents

Clever crows learn to make their own tools

20 NEWS

“Sir Philip Green, it is fair to say, is

unlikely to attain the status of national

treasure anytime soon,” said The

Independent The retail billionaire has

courted unpopularity with his “brash”

manner and outrageously expensive

parties, and will forever be associated

with the demise of BHS And he is now

facing renewed calls for the revocation of

his knighthood following accusations that

he has sexually harassed and racially

abused employees Last week, Lord Hain

used parliamentary privilege to identify

Green as the high-profile businessman

who had taken out an injunction against

The Daily Telegraph to stop it reporting

the allegations against him The Court of

Appeal issued the interim injunction on the grounds that the

complainants against Green had all signed non-disclosure

agreements (NDAs) in return for a financial settlement

Green denies doing anything unlawful

Of course he does, said Matthew Norman in the same paper In

his four decades in business, he told The Mail on Sunday, there

had “obviously from time to time been banter and a bit of

humour”, but he had never set out to offend anybody “I’m very,

very upset,” he said “I’m being used

as target practice.” This testimony

was enough to make one weep for the

boorish businessman, who was tracked

down to a health resort in Arizona, and

for his wife and daughter, who were

holed up in the family’s lavish Monaco

penthouse “They wanted to go shopping in Cannes this

weekend,” said a source, “but they can’t face going out.”

As a result of the gagging clauses, we don’t know exactly what

Green is alleged to have done, said Melanie McDonagh in The

Mail on Sunday However, we can speculate on the basis of

material that is in the public domain An anonymous insider

claimed to The Guardian that Green gives women “lingering

hugs” in meetings, asking them if they are “naughty girls” who

need “their bottoms slapped”; that he enjoys creeping up behind

female colleagues to make them jump, before caressing their

shoulders to “reassure” them; that he calls women “sweetheart”,

“darling” or “love” rather than by their names; that he tells

women they are overweight and publicly humiliates staff of both

sexes during foul-mouthed tirades The former pensions minister

Ros Altmann says Green bombarded her with unpleasant

late-night texts during the row over BHS’s pensions deficit

It’s also alleged that Green routinelyaddressed Filipino members of the crew

on his £115m yacht as “lazy f***ingFlippers” Such accounts suggest Green

is an “overbearing creep” and a “bully”who must be a nightmare to work for,but there’s no evidence that he hascommitted any criminal offence Onthe basis of what we know so far, hisbehaviour “isn’t remotely” in the sameleague as that of Harvey Weinstein,who is accused of coercing numerous

of women into having sex with him.Lord Hain was wrong to name Green

in Parliament, said The Independent –and not just because he is a paid adviser

to the firm of lawyers representing the Telegraph in this case Indoing so, he second-guessed the judgment of the courts, whichhad put in place a temporary injunction while they decidedwhether there was a public interest in allowing the newspaper todisclose the allegations Two of the complainants against Greenwant their NDA to be respected, and none of the NDAs wouldhave prevented the reporting of a crime It’s hard to justify theuse of privilege in this case, agreed David Allen Green in the FT

“Sir Philip is not a sympathetic individual, but the law is not just

about him.”

There are legitimate uses for NDAs incommercial situations, said The DailyTelegraph: in the case of mergers andacquisitions, for example, it’s vital tokeep information confidential But itcan never be right for staff to be pressured into signing them orfor “the law to be complicit in employers buying the silence ofthose alleging harassment or racial abuse” The misuse of thesecontracts to cover up unacceptable behaviour is “completelycontrary to the spirit of the times” If Green is so confident that hehas done nothing wrong, why doesn’t he drop the injunction andrelease the individuals from their NDAs, so that the full facts ofthis case can be set out? There is “something feudal” about theway wealthy men these days can resort to NDAs to effectivelybuy their way out of scandal, said Janice Turner in The Times.Weinstein made extensive use of them But these tactics may havelimited effectiveness for Green Fashion, as he knows, is a “fickle”trade and feminism is all the rage at the moment, so there’s aprospect that many girls may boycott his struggling Topshopchain “In the end it may not be politicians or journalists whobring Philip Green down, but his own teenage customers insparkly tops and oddly cut jeans.”

Talking points

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

“He allegedly enjoys creeping up to female colleagues, before caressing their shoulders to ‘reassure’ them”

Green: “I’m being used as target practice”

easy during his three years as

a judge on The X Factor He

developed “a bad case of

showbiz paranoia”, he writes

in his new autobiography And

that was because whatever

the judges discussed behind

closed doors would find its

way to the press Barlow is

convinced that the producers –

who would stop at nothing to

boost the show’s ratings – had

bugged the dressing rooms

has become a Muslim, andchanged her name to Shuhada’

Davitt The Irish singer, 51, wasbrought up a Roman Catholic,but in 1992 made headlines

by ripping up a picture of

television; seven years later,she was ordained a priest inthe Irish Orthodox Catholicand Apostolic Church, andbecame Mother BernadetteMary Announcing herconversion to Islam, shedescribed it as “the naturalconclusion of any intelligenttheologian’s journey I will

be given (another) new name

on BBC One’s MasterChef,

made the remark to journalist

suggested she write a based meal” series He replied:

“plant-“How about a series on killingvegans, one by one? Ways totrap them? How to interrogatethem properly? Expose theirhypocrisy?” He later apologisedand said he’d been joking, butNelson was not amused “I’venever seen anything like it,”she told Buzzfeed Sitwell hasnow resigned

Pick of the week’s

Gossip

NEWS 21

He has demonised Mexicans

who cross the border as rapists

and gangsters; he has defended

white supremacists and

retweeted anti-Muslim

propaganda He urges his

supporters to chant threats

against people he dislikes, and

he recently endorsed as “my

kind of guy” a congressman

who’d physically assaulted a

journalist President Trump

has frequently been accused of

endorsing violence and

“hate-mongering”, said Janet Daley in

The Sunday Telegraph Yet even

when pipe bombs were mailed

to 13 of his most prominent

critics last week, Hillary Clinton,

Barack Obama, George Soros and Robert De

Niro among them, he refused to tone down his

rhetoric In an official statement, he made all the

right noises, condemning political violence and

calling for unity, but his first unscripted response

– a day after a pipe bomb was sent to CNN

studios – was to suggest that the “Anger we

see today in our society” was largely the fault of

the “Mainstream Media” and its “Fake News”

Then, when Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc was

arrested for the crime, the president accused the

media of using the case to discredit him

On that front, he had a point, said National

Review In June 2017, a Trump-hating

Democrat supporter tried to assassinate a group

of Republican congressmen No one sought to

blame Bernie Sanders YetTrump’s critics have been quick

to suggest that he is responsiblefor Sayoc’s alleged crimes

Yes, Trump’s language can

be intemperate, evenunpresidential But “harsh,overheated rhetoric is endemic

to our political system, and itshould not be confused withincitement to violence” No

“rational person” would hearTrump make his mostincendiary claim, that themainstream press is the “enemy

of the people”, and read that aspermission to send bombs allover the country

But it is absurd to suggest that there is no linkbetween the pipe bomb campaign and Trump’sreckless language, said The Observer: the peopletargeted were his avowed enemies America haschanged since he came to office All the venomspewing from the top has “encouraged, andnormalised, distrust and outright hatred”

Trump may not be responsible for the divisions

in US society, but he has fanned them And hehas done so wittingly, said Andrew Buncombe

in The Independent: Trump knows that hisaggressive, bullying rhetoric plays well with hissupport base and keeps him in the headlines If

he meant what he said last week, about thecountry needing to come together, “he must leadthe way – by changing his actions, words anddeeds” But there’s nothing to suggest he will

Talking points

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

“How desperatelydifficult it is to be honestwith oneself It is mucheasier to be honest withother people.”

Edward F Benson, quoted

on Forbes

“In a rich man’shouse there is no place

to spit but his face.”

Diogenes of Sinope, quoted

in The Times

“Under normalcircumstances, the liar isdefeated by reality; nomatter how large the tissue

of falsehood that anexperienced liar has tooffer, it will never be largeenough to cover theimmensity of factuality.”

Hannah Arendt, quoted in The Guardian

“I have learnt over the yearsthat when one’s mind ismade up, this diminishesfear; knowing what must bedone does away with fear.”

Rosa Parks, quoted on YourStory

“Grave good people,pious people, regularpeople, all like to readabout naughty people.”

Francis Palgrave, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph

“Hard work beatstalent when talentdoesn’t work hard.”

Basketball coach Tim Notke, quoted in The Times

“Being ridiculous isone of the best ways

to tell the truth.”

Russian activist and Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova, quoted on The Daily Beast

“In this country, Americanmeans white Everybodyelse has to hyphenate.”

Toni Morrison, quoted in Teen Vogue

The president: normalising distrust

“Should it be illegal to call the Prophet

Mohammed a ‘paedophile’?” That, said

Kenan Malik in The Observer, was the

question in front of the European Court of

Human Rights (ECHR) last week The case

dated back to 2009, when an Austrian woman

known as ES held seminars promoted by

Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, in which she

accused Mohammed of paedophilic tendencies –

citing his marriage to Aisha, who was, according

to Islamic scripture, only nine when the marriage

was consummated An Austrian court convicted

her of “disparaging religious doctrines” and

fined her s480 The ECHR, finding that her

words went “beyond the permissible limits of an

objective debate”, upheld that conviction A day

later, Ireland voted overwhelmingly to scrap its

blasphemy law, said Fraser Myers on Spiked

Yet the ECHR, it seems, has created a

“blasphemy law by the backdoor”

The issue of Mohammed’s marriage is complex,

said Tim Stanley in The Sunday Telegraph It

was argued that ES didn’t give the cultural

context, and that she had confused the

convention of child marriage, common in

Mohammed’s time, with a proclivity for

paedophilia That may all be true But who

cares? “Don’t we have a right to insult other

people’s beliefs”, and to speak “our own form

of truth”? Apparently not, said Andrew C

McCarthy in National Review Article 10

of the European Convention on Human Rightspurports to safeguard “freedom of expression”,but in the court’s view this needs to be balancedagainst all sorts of conditions and restrictions,including even “the rights of others to have theirreligious feelings protected” It’s crazy InEurope, “free speech has been supplanted bysharia blasphemy standards”

No it hasn’t, said Erik Voeten in TheWashington Post This is not a story aboutblasphemy laws being imposed across Europe

by a mighty international court In fact, it’s

“very nearly the opposite” Austria has its ownblasphemy laws, and the question here waswhether they should be overruled by the ECHR

In recent years, thanks to attacks from wing governments in established democracies– notably in Britain – the court has becomevery reluctant to interfere with state laws oncontroversial human rights issues Here, it foundthat the Austrian authorities should have “awide margin of appreciation” to decide suchcases: similar reasoning to that used when itupheld, for instance, France’s ban on the burqa

right-The ruling is evidence that the ECHR is inretreat: it “thinks it can no longer manage thesehighly sensitive issues at the European level”

Statistic of the week

An estimated ten millionpumpkins are grown inthe UK every year, 95%

of which are used forHalloween lanterns

The Guardian

Wit & Wisdom

30 runs.

Football Manchester City

beat Tottenham 1-0 to return

to the top of the PremierLeague Manchester Unitedbeat Everton 2-1 Chelseabeat Burnley 4-0 JulenLopetegui was sacked asReal Madrid manager

Rugby league England’s

three-match series againstNew Zealand began with an18-16 victory

Tennis Ukrainian player

Elina Svitolina beatAmerica’s Sloane Stephens

to win the WTA Finals

“It was one of the most evocative, yet strangely

incongruous, sights in football,” said Martin

Samuel in the Daily Mail “The bright blue

helicopter, landing in the centre circle.” It arrived

at Leicester City’s King Power Stadium after every

home game to take Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha,

the club’s Thai owner, back to his Berkshire home

But on Saturday evening, following Leicester’s

1-1 draw with West Ham, the aircraft spiralled

out of control It crashed in a fireball outside the

stadium, killing Srivaddhanaprabha and four

other people Since then, Leicester has been in

mourning After all, it was Srivaddhanaprabha

who made the Foxes’ remarkable Premier League

title in 2016 possible His arrival at Leicester “was

the greatest thing that happened to the city” – and

probably “the greatest thing to happen to English

football too”

Srivaddhanaprabha “preferred to stay out of the limelight”,

said Stuart James in The Guardian But behind the scenes, he

exhibited a “relentless determination to drive the club on” When

he bought Leicester in 2010, they had just finished fifth in the

Championship By 2014, they were back in the Premier League

Most owners, at that point, would focus on staying up Not

Srivaddhanaprabha: he announced that he wanted to finish in the

top five within three years It sounded like “bullishtalk” – but only two years later, the Foxes werecrowned Premier League champions It was theowner, as much as anyone, who deserved creditfor that success: he hired Claudio Ranieri asmanager, in the face of widespread opposition;

in total, he spent at least £150m on the club.Srivaddhanaprabha didn’t just make Leicestersuccessful, said Henry Winter in The Times

He genuinely cared about the club and its fans

He donated £2m for a children’s hospital at theRoyal Infirmary; £23,000 to a fan who wasraising money to research his son’s rare geneticdisorder When he turned 60, this year, he gavefree season tickets to 60 of the most dedicatedsupporters That marked him out from so manyowners, who are only “in it for the ego ride or thebroadcasting gold rush” Srivaddhanaprabha was “everywhere atthe club”, said Danny Drinkwater, a former Leicester player, inthe same paper You’d see him in the dressing room, the canteen;

he treated players and staff to lavish dinners It felt like he was

“one of the lads” – the club’s striker Jamie Vardy was so close

to him that he even invited him to his wedding Vichai wantedLeicester to be “a club where everyone from the cleaning staff tothe captain could come and speak to him, and he achieved that”.Football: a tragedy at Leicester

On Sunday afternoon, Lewis Hamilton “took

a giant leap into Formula One immortality”,

said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph The

Mercedes driver came fourth in the Mexican

Grand Prix, earning enough points to secure a

fifth world title with two races to spare He is now

the joint second-most successful driver of all time,

level with Juan Manuel Fangio; and at only 33, he

could yet “vault past Michael Schumacher’s seven

and seal his place as the greatest driver who has

ever lived” Hamilton has been “near faultless”,

winning nine of the 19 races so far; his closest

rival, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, boasts only five

victories What’s truly remarkable is that Hamilton was driving

a Mercedes, said Andrew Benson on BBC Sport online In the

previous four seasons, the team had the fastest car in F1 But this

time, it was Ferrari whose engine had the edge Even that wasn’t

enough to stop Hamilton It’s proof that he is a preternaturally

fast driver – perhaps the fastest the sport has ever seen

This triumph confirms that Hamilton is one ofBritain’s greatest sportsmen, said Matt Dickinson

in The Times So why aren’t more peopleinterested? When he won his first world title,

in 2008, 12.5 million people tuned in to therace on ITV But viewer numbers for races have

“fallen quite consistently” since then You canhardly blame people for switching off, saidOliver Brown Hamilton’s dominance has madeF1 predictable: this was his fourth title in fiveyears And the shape of the current crop of cars,under the regulations on aerodynamics, has madethe sport even more boring Once the vehicles getclose to each other, they lose about 50% of their downforce,slowing them down considerably As a result, drivers have beenstruggling to overtake each other Fortunately, the regulations areset to be “revolutionised” in 2021 That promises to finally makeraces more exciting If only it could happen sooner: this is a sportthat desperately needs to be shaken up

Formula One: Hamilton joins the greats

Srivaddhanaprabha: cared

Australian cricket gets a “kick up the backside”

Hamilton: “near faultless”

Sporting headlines

It was the biggest scandal to hit

cricket in years, said Sam Perry

in The Guardian When

Australia’s captain, Steve Smith,

and vice-captain, David Warner,

admitted in March to ball

tampering against South Africa,

it set off a “moral panic” The

punishments were “swift and

eye-wateringly fierce”: Smith

and Warner were banned for a

year; Darren Lehmann resigned

as head coach But according to a damning new

report, the problems go much deeper than that:

the whole culture of Australian cricket is to

blame In particular, the report points the finger

at Cricket Australia (CA), the governing body,

calling its administrators “arrogant” and

“controlling” Ball tampering was not an

“aberration”, it says, but the fault of a system

that celebrates aggression andwinning at all costs

“Australian cricket neededthis huge kick up the backside,”

said Paul Newman in the DailyMail On the past two Ashestours, the Australian playersresorted to poisonousmethods: one even allegedlyaddressed England cricketerMoeen Ali as “Osama” What’sparticularly shocking is the wayadministrators brought out the worst in players,said Mike Atherton in The Times In their hungerfor success, they encouraged cricketers to playthe “mongrel” – to abuse their opponents

The report reveals CA to be a body that “knowsthe price of everything, but the value

of nothing” It needs to remember that cricket

is “a sport and not a business”

Smith: banned for ball tampering

Victims’ justice

To The Sunday Times

Your report “Man who

‘dreamt up’ a VIP abuse ring

on trial” might cause readers

to wonder why the man

known as “Nick” still has

anonymity, while I, being

falsely accused of three child

murders, have been “named

and shamed” for more than

three years without any

evidence whatsoever Others

have similarly been traduced,

and the effect on our families

and friends has been

monu-mental Is it not time for a fair

balance in our criminal justice

system, whereby “suspects”

are not routinely identified

until charges are brought?

The automatic “believe the

victim” policy promoted by

our government and national

policing establishment has

torn up the ancient principle

of innocent until proven guilty

This has significant

implica-tions for us all

To better protect real

victims, it is time for equality

of treatment towards those

who are accused before police

charges are brought We elect

MPs to address grievances and

protect liberties We have a

right to ask what they are

doing about this injustice?

K Harvey Proctor Belvoir,

Leicestershire

Imaginary combat

To The Daily Telegraph

I am glad the soldier in theDuke of Lancaster’s Regiment,featured in your photo, had awood to fight in for training

I have, over the years, beenobliged to take part in JEWTs– jungle exercises without trees– and even DEWDs (desertexercises without dunes)

Others included a NEWD –night exercise without darkness– during which we wererequired to transit WoodburyCommon’s numerous obstacleswearing blindfolds

The TEWT – tacticalexercise without troops – iswell known to military officerswhile, sadly, our maritimeforces seem to be headingfor a series of NEWS, ornaval exercises without ships

I once conducted a SLEWP,appropriately named for theyacht club in which I waslecturing When the projectorbroke during the second of

50 slides, I was forced tocontinue with a slide showextravaganza without pictures

Ewen Southby-Tailyour, Ermington, Devon

A fair trial?

To The Times

Of course Sir Philip Green isinnocent until proven guilty,unlike Lord Hain, who in

2007, when running forthe deputy leadership ofthe Labour Party, failed

to declare donations andresigned in 2008 It isdebatable whether Greencould now receive a fair trial

Sidney Hauswirth, London

Vulnerable children

To The Guardian

A framework of support forsome of the nation’s mostvulnerable children and theirfamilies, young people withspecial educational needs anddisabilities – that has shownsteady progress since the

1978 Warnock Report –has been destroyed by thepolicies of Michael Goveand George Osborne

As a former local educationauthority senior adviser andhigher education lecturer forspecial educational

needs, I can’t expresshow angry I feel overthe destruction ofthese services It isnot “looming”; it is

a crisis Fifteen out

of every 100 childrenhave these needs,which includedisabilities from thepartially sighted andhearing impaired tochildren with mildand complex learning

difficulties Educationalpsychology services, speechtherapy, home tuition for sickchildren, teams of highlyqualified specialist supportteachers and advisers havebeen reduced to a rump.Specialist integrated units

in mainstream schools areclosing Vandalism is too kind

a term The worry and stresscaused to the families of thesedeserving children denied theirright to life-enhancingeducation is incalculable

Dr Robin C Richmond, Bromyard, Herefordshire

Dangerous machines

To The Sunday Telegraph

If the bicycle had only beeninvented yesterday, it wouldundoubtedly be illegal

Neale Edwards, Chard, Somerset

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

LETTERS

Pick of the week’s correspondence

© PRIVATE EYE

“Due to the latest police cutbacks, I’m going

to have to be Good Cop and Bad Cop”

● Letters have been edited

Exchange of the week

Which vote should be decisive? And who should make it?

To The Times

Philip Collins suggests that MPs should

back any deal Theresa May negotiates,

even though they know it will be

miserable, because otherwise we may fall

into an even deeper circle of hell –

crash-ing out of the EU with no deal at all

If the only choices were the Prime

Minister’s purgatory and Boris Johnson’s

hell, Collins’s advice might be sensible

But there is a third: holding a new

refer-endum and giving the people the option

to avoid both hell and purgatory The

chance of getting such a People’s Vote

is high after 700,000 people took part

in last month’s march So Collins

presents MPs with a false dilemma

Some risk-averse MPs might still be

tempted by his logic, on the basis that

there is no guarantee we will secure a

People’s Vote with the option to stay

in the EU But there is a flaw in this

thinking too The MPs’ vote on any deal

will not take place in the last minutes

before we are supposed to leave the EU

on 29 March Legislation passed thissummer means it has to happen no laterthan the last week of January So therewill be two to three months to sort out

an alternative to purgatory and hell

The most sensible option will be to askthe people what they want, an idea MPsare likely to rally behind if they reject adeal But if the worst came to the worstand Parliament couldn’t reach consensus,there would still be time to switch back

to purgatory So MPs should have notruck with Collins’s defeatist thinking

Hugo Dixon, deputy chairman, People’s Vote

To The Times

In January 2017 there was a courtcase to ensure that Parliament had thefinal vote on Brexit I thought it ironicthen that, after more than 40 years

of being content with subjection toBrussels, Remainers were discoveringthe importance of our parliamentarysovereignty Now they are clamouring

for another referendum Uh?

Heather Barton, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

To The Daily Telegraph

In a recent letter, your correspondentsuggests that having Jeremy Corbyn asprime minister would be more damagingthan a botched Brexit, and that this is areason to continue to vote Conservative

I fear he may not have fully consideredthe consequences, for our democracyand our freedoms, of continuing to votefor a party that disregards the largestdemocratic vote in our history If onevote’s outcome may be ignored, why notanother? And if a party that fails to act

on our votes faces no consequences fordoing so, why should it pay anyattention to our other needs?

Failing to implement a Brexit that isrecognised as such by those who votedfor it will ruin not only the Tory party,but our democracy itself

Phil Coutie, Exeter, Devon

Oicial fuel consumption figures in mpg (l/100km) for the All-New Ford Focus range: urban 36.7-74.3 (7.7-3.8), extra urban 55.4-85.6(5.1-3.3), combined 46.3-80.7 (6.1-3.5) Official CO2emissions 137-91g/km.

The mpg figures quoted are sourced from oicial EU-regulated test results (EU Regulation 715/2007 and 692/2008 as last amended), are provided for comparability purposes and may not reflect your actual driving experience Information correct at time of going to print.

3 November 2018 THE WEEK

ARTS

Philip Larkin’s best-known line –

“They f*** you up, your mum and

dad” – has encouraged the idea that

the poet must have had a miserable

childhood, said John Carey in The

Sunday Times But one of the striking

things about this selection of letters,

“superbly edited” by James Booth, is that it shows how much

Larkin “loved and respected his parents”, and how much they

“worshipped him” The earliest letters, dating from Larkin’s

schooldays, reveal his father, Sydney, to have been an avid reader

who inspired his son’s love of literature, and who “introduced

him to modern literature: Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield,

T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound and, above all, D.H Lawrence, whom

both father and son idolised” Sydney died of cancer when Larkin

was in his mid-20s, a loss his mother, Eva, “never really recovered

from” For the next 25 years, Larkin wrote to her every Sunday,

and visited her frequently too When, in 1972, she moved into a

care home, he “stepped up his rate, writing virtually every day

until her death, aged 91, in 1977” More than 600 of these letters

(from some 4,000 that survived) make

it into this volume, and they reveal that,for all his misanthropic reputation,Larkin was capable of selfless devotion.This is a volume worth celebrating,said Andrew Motion in The Spectator,

if only for being the “last significantcollection” of Larkin papers But thesad truth is that most of the letters areremarkably banal There are pitifullyfew insights into Larkin’s poetry, orrelationships with other people Instead,

we learn about his shopping habits andhis digestion (“My inside feels a triflecongested at the moment, for I haveeaten nearly a whole tin of salmon forsupper”) “The cumulative effect is notjust dull”, but somehow belittling I couldn’t disagree more, saidRoger Lewis in The Times It’s precisely the commonplace focus

of these letters that makes reading them a “blissful” experience.Tin openers, shopping trolleys and chiropodist appointments areall discussed at length Darning socks is another big topic It’s

“like a dialogue composed by (and starring) Alan Bennett andVictoria Wood” Yet it isn’t all “monochrome comedy” Evaemerges as someone who, by “bellyaching and smothering herson”, created “something unsound in him”, rendering himincapable of having a mature romantic relationship And Larkin,for his part, exploited the resulting misery in his poetry As Boothwisely puts it: “Larkin is a great poet of domestic joys andsorrows Eva haunts his poetry, as theme and muse.”

Philip Larkin:

Letters Home

by Philip Larkin

Faber 688pp £40

The Week Bookshop £32.99 (incl p&p)

Review of reviews: Books

Book of the week

Seven years ago, Nicholas Shaxson published

Treasure Islands, a riveting exposé of Britain’s

tax havens, said John Arlidge in The Sunday

Times His new book concentrates on

something even more damaging: the progressive

“financialisation” of our economy Ordinarily,

Shaxson argues, the financial sector performs a

useful role, regulating markets and providing

credit to businesses Yet once it grows above an

optimal size, “it begins to harm the country that hosts it” With forensic analysis

and sharp reporting, he shows how most large businesses (not just banks) are

structured in bewilderingly complex ways that not only facilitates tax avoidance,

but enables investors to increase their share of the spoils in good times, while

offloading the “costs of failure” onto staff and customers Shaxson also suggests

that the City of London acts as a “brain drain” on the country, sucking up talent

that might usefully have gone into more productive enterprises

The book’s chief value lies in Shaxson’s ability to demystify high finance, said

Emma Duncan in The Times He elucidates credit default swaps, special purpose

vehicles and the opaque world of private equity He’s also excellent at showing

how Britain’s pre-eminence as a financial centre depends on its combination of a

strong legal system (“which stops people stealing your money”) and a weak

regu-latory one (which makes it easier to “steal other people’s”) The more polemical

sections are less convincing: here, Shaxson directs his anger at the usual targets

of left-wing ire Yet he is right to insist we need radical solutions, said Oliver

Bullough in The Guardian Both major parties have signally failed to grasp the

urgency of tackling the bloated financial sector “Politically difficult” though it

may be, scaling back the City would result in everyone having “more money”

The Finance Curse

by Nicholas Shaxson

Bodley Head 368pp £20

The Week Bookshop £16.99

Novel of the week

Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

Faber 480pp £20

The Week Bookshop £16.99

Barbara Kingsolver specialises in writing “highlyreadable novels about ordinary people caught up

in the tumult of history”, said Claire Allfree inThe Daily Telegraph This one, set in New Jersey,chronicles two sets of events, spaced 150 yearsapart, both involving dilapidated houses and theoverthrow of “once-trusted ideologies” In 2016,just before Trump becomes president, journalistWilla and academic Iano inherit a sprawling19th century farmhouse, into which they movewith their two adult children, both homeless In

1871, another married couple living on the sameplot come into conflict with local religious elders.This may be the “first great political novel ofthe Trump era”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr inThe Times It’s both funny and “chewy”, andthe dual time structure enables Kingsolver tosuggest the forces that produced Trump are not

so new “Kingsolver has always been a bossywriter,” said Kate Clanchy in The Guardian

Here, alas, that tendency dominates Unsheltered

is an over-researched and “progressivelyexhausting” novel, whose characters arenever allowed to “breathe for themselves”

To order these titles or any other book in print, visit

theweek.co.uk/bookshopor speak to a bookseller on020-3176 3835

Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm

Larkin and Eva in 1965: both mother and “muse”

28 ARTS

THE WEEK 3 November 2018

Drama

Theatre: A Very Very Very Dark Matter

Bridge Theatre, London SE1 (0333-320 0051) Until 6 January Running time: 1hr 30mins ★★

A Very Very Very Dark Matter

is a “very, very, very strange

play”, said Matt Trueman

in Variety Written by the

playwright and Oscar-winning

screenwriter Martin McDonagh

(who wrote and directed Three

Billboards Outside Ebbing,

Missouri), the play is an

extended surreal metaphor

for colonial guilt It finds

Hans Christian Andersen

(Jim Broadbent) living in a

loft and holding captive – in

a mahogany box – Marjory,

a one-legged Congolese pygmy

woman She, it turns out, is the

true author of his works So far,

so odd But even if this were an interesting set-up, what McDonagh

gives us is a “very, very, very damp squib” The attempts at black

comedy aren’t funny, and the “stylistic mash-up” of thriller,

vaudeville and fairy tale adds up to a disappointing muddle

The play is “indulgent, opaque and messy”, agreed

Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out Did I mention the ghost

Belgians? Or the time-travelling attempt to forestall genocide?

Or Andersen’s trip to see Dickens, who has his own pygmy

proxy? Or the haunted accordion? Or the rambling voice-over

from Tom Waits? It’s all wildly incoherent Yet it has a sort of

“malevolent brio” that lingers long after you’ve given up

wondering what McDonagh “was on when he wrote it” It’s a

play you will either love or loathe, said Michael Billington in The

Guardian I found its

“Gothic fantasy macabre,funny and ultimately serious”

It contains remarkableperformances from Broadbentand Johnetta Eula’Mae Ackles

as the captive And it confirmsMcDonagh as a “genuineoriginal with a talent to disturb”

I loved it, said Ian Shuttleworth

in the FT It’s a “magnificentwild card of a show, at oncegaudy yet umbrous”

Well I loathed it, saidFergus Morgan on What’s OnStage The racial stereotyping,the “Tarantino-esque” violence,the banal subversion of well-known literary figures: it doesn’t feel “cheeky or charming, it feelsoffensive, irresponsible and, well, childish” What comes to mind

is Andersen’s tale The Emperor’s New Clothes “McDonagh has

stood up on the South Bank, and everyone can see he’s starkers.”

Jim Broadbent: a remarkable performance

The week’s other opening

The Wild Duck Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, London N1

(020-7359 4404) Until 1 December

“If you want an example of the arrogance of director’s theatre,”head to Robert Icke’s “parasitic rewrite” of Ibsen’s tragicomicmasterpiece It “treats this elusive play as if it were a lecture”,and seems “oblivious” to its comedy and irony (Guardian)

Robyn: Honey

Konichiwa

Records

£10

It is eight years since Swedish pop genius

Robyn’s last album, said Alexis Petridis in

The Guardian Naturally, this is not ideal in

a field “where attention spans are short and

memories shorter still” But with this terrific

collection, Robyn “shows her imitators how

it’s done” – playing with the modern pop

palette to create a wonderfully “complex

heartbreak album” It may not help Robyn

dominate the charts; it feels too opaque and

introspective for that But “as evidence of

a unique artist pursuing a personal vision

in a world filled with the commonplace,

however, Honey is perfect”.

Balancing melancholy and escapism,

these new songs – a mere nine, which

seems a touch miserly – “wrap themselves

around you like the Robyn of old”, said

Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times They

are “all warm-breeze electropop textures,

glitchy beats, club grooves, insistent,

inclusive, whisper-in-your-ear lyrics and

arcing vocal lines” A churl might point

out how familiar the soundscapes are on a

couple of tracks “But who likes a churl?”

Thom Yorke’s new solo album, thesoundtrack for the remake of the cult classic

1970s horror film Suspiria, is an “intriguing

sideways swerve” for the Radiohead man,who’s “still finding new ways to unsettleand delight listeners after all these years”,said Simon Vozick-Levinson in RollingStone It’s not a conventional film score inthe style of bandmate Jonny Greenwood’s

“avant-orchestral opuses” for There Will Be

Blood and Phantom Thread Rather, it’s an

80-minute “grab bag of witching-hourinstrumentals, strange grunts ‘n’ gurgles,creepy monk chants – and, every so often,

a drop-dead gorgeous song”

An example of the latter, saidPhil Mongredien in The Observer, is

Suspirium – a song of “fragile beauty”,

featuring a keening vocal and pianobacking, that would have fitted seamlesslyonto Radiohead’s recent albums Other

highlights are the jazz-tinged Unmade and the “hypnotic” Open Again, on which an

acoustic guitar is “gradually submergedbeneath a wash of eerie sounds”

“History looms large over this new disc”

of Rachmaninov’s Second and Fourth PianoConcertos from Daniil Trifonov, said RichardFairman in the FT Rachmaninov’s ownhistoric recording of his piano concertoswith The Philadelphia Orchestra (underLeopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandybetween 1924 and 1941) are “among theclassics of the gramophone era” Taking

on these great works is a challenge for anyyoung pretender; going to Philadelphia to

do so “seems like tempting fate”

Happily, Trifonov aces it, said AndrewClements in The Guardian The 27-year-oldRussian, perhaps the most exciting pianist

to have emerged in the past 30 years, issurely “peerless today as a Rachmaninovinterpreter” His (oddly-titled) album offersperformances of “such musical awareness,tonal variety and dazzling virtuosity thateven the Second, one of the most popular

of all piano concertos, has every trace ofover-familiarity stripped away” Trifonov’sversions belong with the finest yet made,including those by the composer himself

DestinationRachmaninov –Departure

Deutsche Grammophon

£10.99

Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (4 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)

Book your tickets now by calling 020-7492 9948 or visiting TheWeekTickets.co.uk