Digested week: cheap meat and Corfe Castle – a toast to Brexit five years on
Why all the long faces? Just a few days ago it was the fifth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU, so how come we didn't have a weekend of celebrations? The Labour government marked the occasion by choosing to ignore it entirely. As if it had never happened. The Tories were also rather muted, with Kemi Badenoch keeping a low profile. Even Nigel Farage was sotto voce. His statement merely noted that Brexit would have gone a great deal better if the Tories had managed it better. As usual, Nige was taking no personal responsibility for anything.
So it's left to me to toast the many successes of the Brexit project. To sound a note of triumphalism. Here's just a few. First, the trade deals. Why do people get so hung up about the 4% drop in GDP when we are now a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership? Give it 10 years of so and we might increase our GDP by 0.01%. Surely that's something to get excited about.
Then there's the trade deal with Australia that allows Aussie farmers to dump cheap meat in the UK. Brexit wasn't all about improving our trade, it was about giving a boost to the Commonwealth as well. Job done. Nor must we forget the increased regulations. As Chris Philp recently pointed out, most British workers are terminally lazy. That's why we now make exporters fill in tens of millions of completely unnecessary forms each year. The EU had made us idle. Brexit has restored the work ethic.
And thank God we got rid of the youth mobility scheme. All those young people wandering around Europe, having a good time in Florence or Barcelona. Eating pasta and tapas. That had to stop. Fraternising with Europeans when they could have been looking at Corfe Castle in the rain. If God had wanted us to speak a foreign language, he would have made us foreign. What's the point of being an island nation if we're going to waste time on the European mainland? Finally, there are the lengthy queues at European airports. Queueing is uniquely British and it's good to show the French and Germans how to do it properly. Call it soft power. Chin up, everyone.
Even by his usual reality-bending, incoherent standards, the latest intervention from Donald Trump was spectacularly wild. For the US to own Gaza, to kick out the 1.8 million Palestinians and turn the territory into the Riviera of the Middle East. Golf courses and casinos wherever you look. Foreign policy reduced to a real estate deal. This didn't just take the rest of the world by surprise, it also caught his supporters off guard. Trump had campaigned on a ticket of non-intervention on the global stage.
There again, maybe The Donald is a mystery to himself. You often get the impression that the words tumble out of his mouth of their own accord and that he has no idea of what he is going to say until after he has said it. So he's constantly playing catchup with himself. Either way, the fallout was predictable, with every country in the Middle East bar Israel, along with many others around the world, insisting the US plan was never going to happen. It broke with the Geneva conventions and amounted to ethnic cleansing. Bizarrely, Trump then announced that everyone loved the plan and that it was definitely going to happen. Just with no US money or boots on the ground. We were now through the other side of the looking-glass.
Keir Starmer's response was instructive. He has clearly given a lot of thought to how to deal with the president and has decided to take the indulgent-parent approach. Shower him with praise and then suggest a few minor tweaks. So Keir declared The Donald was ahead of the game in realising Gaza was now rubble. He himself had never noticed that before. The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, adopted a similar approach by saying he had never known Greenland existed before Trump brought it to his notice. Perhaps this is the way forward.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has recently been complaining that the Chinese have been scraping his data to train their own AI engine DeepSeek. Copyright theft on an industrial scale. I guess Sam should know what he's talking about as OpenAI ransacked the internet to get its own engine up and running. Along the way, he powered his way through several hundred thousand books without asking the authors' permission or offering a payment. Instead, he just stole everyone's intellectual property. Including mine. A friend directed me to a website where you could find out whether your own books had been part of the grand larceny. And, sure enough, several of my books had been chosen to be immortalised on various giant servers somewhere out in the desert. Fame of sorts, I suppose.
More interesting is: what is my contribution to AI? What will future generations unknowingly learn from me? From Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success they will learn that being a Spurs fan is a life sentence in disappointment. And it is the hope that finishes you off. Give it a year or two and they could find that out for themselves. From Brideshead Abbreviated, OpenAI will have found out how to parody 100 of the best books of the 20th century. Slightly niche, I would have thought. That just leaves several collections of my political sketches over the last 10 years. I guess even AI needs to develop a sense of humour. Much like Westminster.
Sometimes the sketch is a straightforward transcription service. Another lobby friend recently tested DeepSeek by asking it to write a sketch about Chris Philp in the style of John Crace. It was disturbingly good. Apart from one thing. It thought the Tories were still in government and that Philp was still a minister. My job is safe for a little while yet, I hope.
Yet again I seem to find myself out of sync with the rest of the world. Research conducted by scientists at University College London and published in the British Medical Journal Mental Health has found that people are at their happiest when they wake up in the morning. Thereafter, the day seems to slip away from them and they feel progressively worse. By the time it gets to midnight, they are wondering why they even bothered to engage with the world. They would have been better off staying in bed all day watching TV on their laptops. There were some variations, as you might expect: people felt generally more chipper at weekends and on holiday, but the general principle applies: if you're feeling crap, try not to dwell on it. Just go to sleep and you will wake up in a better mood.
All of which is the precise opposite of my own biorhythms. I dread waking up each morning because that is when I am at my worst. When I am most in the grip of my anxiety. I often feel so anxious it is a struggle to get out of bed. The urge to hide under the duvet is almost irresistible.
Frequently I have to give myself a strong talking to. Reduce the morning to small increments. Minor achievements. Check phone. Get dressed. Go downstairs. Have breakfast. Answer texts and emails. Leave house. Once I've done all this, I find my anxiety is more or less manageable. I can get on with the day. Enjoy what I am doing at work. Have fun with friends and colleagues. Go to the gym. By the time I get home, I'm at my most relaxed. Ready even for something as brain dead as Silent Witness. Talking of which, the season finale was so bad it was a must-watch. Jack and Nikki's wedding was hysterical. Awkward dancing in Trafalgar Square. Two people with no obvious attraction to one another. Bring on season 29.
The older I get, the more I want to mark important milestones. Maybe I'm getting more sentimental, or maybe it's a realisation that I may not have so many of these occasions left as I would like and I want to make the best of them. So I should point out that we are very close to the anniversary of my heartache. My very own unwanted memento mori. Obviously some memories have faded in time. I can't remember the faces of those in the hospital beds next to me. But a lot is still vivid. The feelings of terror. Of being out of control. The consultant, doctors and nurses who looked after me and saved my life. The notion of time appearing to slow down.
To all intents and purposes, I am now a well man. My artery has been unblocked. My heart is functioning well in stress tests. My blood results are normal. I take all my meds with the devotion of a man who has been given a second chance. And yet … something important has changed. I feel more vulnerable than I ever did before. There is not a day goes by without me thinking of my heart attack. It's always just beneath the surface of my thoughts. Sometimes when I am heading off to work, I find myself wondering if I will make it back home. Whenever I am in the gym – the place where I had my heart attack – I am always on the lookout for chest pains. Most of all, I feel like I have been given a chronicle of a death foretold. As if I know how I am going to die. All that's left to be decided is when.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South Wales Argus
3 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
Councillor Anthony Hunt on working with not against staff
In our NHS looking after patients. In our emergency services responding to calls. In our schools helping our young people learn. In social care helping keep young and old people in need of care safe and well. Collecting our bins, looking after our local environment, running vital community services like libraries, and so much more. As a leader, my firm belief is that you get the best services by working with these dedicated staff, not against them. By helping equip them to deliver better services, not by grinding them down. Which is why I was so alarmed by the language coming out of Reform's Nigel Farage and Richard Tice recently. After they took control of some English councils in May, Farage said staff working from home, on climate change or diversity initiatives should start 'seeking alternative careers very, very quickly'. Then his deputy, Richard Tice, announced that new employees at councils controlled by Reform UK will get less generous pensions, and called defined benefit pension schemes 'an outrage'. Now, I get that many people in other jobs have had it tough recently. Pay hasn't kept up with rising costs, so people feel the pinch. But dividing private and public sector workers won't help anyone. To start with, the idea that local government staff have had it easy just doesn't ring true. They've seen their pay eroded by 20 per cent in real terms in the past 15 years, and each of them is having to do more work thanks to cuts and rising demand. Several areas are encountering recruitment difficulties. These people are not bureaucrats and pen pushers – they're people who work hands-on in our communities, keeping vital local services afloat. An 'X' site called 'DOGE Wales' has been set up, which seeks to further these attacks – as if the ineffective and destructive policies of Trump and Musk are a good example for us to emulate. This took aim at one of our staff in Torfaen – someone who works in our schools with Gypsy Traveller children to help them engage and achieve. It asked if the cost of this work was value for money. I'd say that staff member is worth their weight in gold, just like other members of staff in our schools who help children, from the high achievers to those with disabilities or additional needs. We need more of these local stars in our communities, not less. So I reject these divisive attacks – they may grab cheap attention, but they are no way to run sustainable local services. We need to build our public services and back those who work in them, not attack them. Councillor Anthony Hunt is leader of Torfaen County Borough Council.
South Wales Argus
3 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
MPs to reintroduce bill in name of girl, 9, who died in pollution-linked death
Dubbed 'Ella's Law,' the proposed legislation is named after Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who lived 82ft from the busy South Circular Road in Lewisham and suffered the fatal asthma attack in February 2013. She became the first person to have air pollution listed as a cause of death following a landmark inquest in 2020. Sian Berry, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion will present the bill to the House of Commons with a speech on Tuesday July 1, with the aim of making clean air a human right under UK law. If passed, the bill would require the Government to achieve clean air throughout England by January 1 2030, setting out a pathway to bring the country in line with World Health Organisation air pollution guidelines. She has so far been backed by cross-party Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP and Independent MPs but hopes that more will support the bill and it will be picked up by the Government in the next King's Speech. Ella's mother Rosamund Adoo Kissi-Debrah has long campaigned for the Government to introduce stricter air pollution limits since her daughter died. In 2022, a similar version of Ella's law was steered through the House of Lords by Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb. Sian Berry and Rosumund Adoo Kissi-Deborah on the on the boundary of the South Circular Road in London (Green Party/PA) It was later sponsored by Caroline Lucas MP in the Commons until Parliament was dissolved for the 2024 general election. Ms Berry said: 'Deaths like Ella's, and the millions of lives blighted by preventable diseases caused by air pollution, can be a thing of the past if Governments start taking the right action now. 'Rosamund's campaign is gaining momentum and communities across the country are raising air pollution as a key problem in their local area, so it is great to have representatives from all parties joining together to press for a legal right to breathe clean air. 'Finally passing Ella's Law will save lives, as it will make sure we get new targets, and the funding for local areas to achieve them by cutting down on the many causes of toxic pollution, from road traffic to wood burning.' Ms Adoo Kissi-Debrah said: 'I am delighted Sian and the cross-section of MPs are taking forward Ella's Law in parliament. 'Tackling air pollution should not be a partisan issue, it affects us all, in every constituency in the country. 'I believe that everyone has a right to breathe clean air, no matter where they live, the colour of their skin or their socio-economic background. 'We know that air pollution affects most people in this country, but the harshest effects are felt by poorer and marginalised communities. 'I hope this Labour Government will therefore take forward this Bill to protect all children and adults from the devastating effects of breathing toxic air.' The announcement comes as campaigners, health professionals, local authorities and schools across the country will mark Clean Air Day on Thursday. In the UK, toxic air pollution is estimated to cause between 29,000 and 43,000 premature deaths every year, according to The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution. Sarah Sleet, chief executive at Asthma + Lung UK, said: 'These early deaths represent a failure of government to act as current policies and targets do not do enough to protect public health. 'Toxic air has a detrimental impact on the millions of people living with a lung condition in the UK – with four out of five telling us that it makes their breathing difficulties worse. 'We need action now to protect the public's lungs.' Ella's estate, over which Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debrah acts as administrator, sued the Environment Department (Defra), the Department for Transport and the Department of Health and Social Care for compensation over her 'illness and premature death'. In October last year, three Government departments settled the claim brought by law firm Hodge Jones & Allen for an undisclosed sum, and issued a statement telling Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debrah 'we are truly sorry for your loss' and that no child should have to suffer as Ella did.
Powys County Times
3 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Flagship welfare reform plans to be introduced in Parliament
The Government's flagship reforms to the welfare system are expected to have their first outing in Parliament on Wednesday. The Welfare Reform Bill will be introduced in the House of Commons, and its text will be published so MPs can begin scrutiny of the proposals. The major reforms are set to include the tightening of criteria for the main disability benefit in England, personal independence payment (Pip). I'll vote against these awful welfare reforms. A Labour government should lift people out of poverty, not put people into it. If you agree, then please write to your MP and tell them that. — Brian Leishman (@BrianLeishmanMP) June 17, 2025 Ministers also want to cut the sickness related element of universal credit (UC), and delay access to it, so only those aged 22 and over can claim it. The package of reforms is aimed at encouraging more people off sickness benefits and into work, and the Government hopes it can save up to £5 billion a year by doing so. But ministers are likely to face a Commons stand-off with backbench Labour MPs over their plans, with dozens of them last month saying the proposals were 'impossible to support'. The Bill is set to be introduced as the latest benefits data has shown that more than 3.7 million people in England and Wales are claiming Pip, with teenagers and young adults making up a growing proportion. The latest data, published by the Department for Work and Pensions on Tuesday, showed there were a record 3.74 million people in England and Wales claiming Pip as of April this year. The figure is up from 3.69 million in January and a jump of 200,000 from 3.54 million a year earlier. Data for Pip claimants begins in January 2019, when the number stood at 2.05 million. Pip is a benefit aimed at helping with extra living costs if someone has a long-term physical or mental health condition or disability and difficulty doing certain everyday tasks or getting around because of their condition. Teenagers and young adults account for a growing proportion of those getting Pip. Some 16.5% of claimants in April this year were aged 16-19, up from 14.6% in April 2019. The 30-44 age group has similarly grown, while the number of 45-59 year-olds has fallen. The figure for 60-74 year-olds has risen slightly over this period, from 29.3% to 30.8%. It was reported in recent days that Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has agreed to include 'non-negotiable' protections in the Bill, including a guarantee that those who no longer qualify for Pip will still receive the payments for 13 weeks, rather than just four weeks. The concession is seen as a move to avert a rebellion by Labour MPs opposed to the overall reforms, but have been described as 'not very much really' by one such parliamentarian. Downing Street insisted it was 'crucial to say we are committed to the reforms that we've set out'. A No 10 spokesman said: 'You've heard that from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Work and Pensions Secretary, on the principles behind this and the urgent need for this. 'You have the statistics, they show we have the highest level of working age inactivity due to ill health in Western Europe. 'We're the only major economy whose employment rate hasn't recovered since the pandemic.' Pip will remain 'an important non-means-tested benefit for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions, regardless of whether they are in or out of work', he said, but added the Government would build a 'system that is fairer' through its reforms. It is thought the restrictions on Pip would slash benefits for about 800,000 people. Ms Kendall previously said there are 1,000 new Pip awards every day – 'the equivalent of adding a city the size of Leicester every single year'.
