Latest news with #Morgenthau
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘A younger crowd': the rise of Britain's early-bird restaurant dining
Previously sitting down for dinner at 5pm usually meant one of three things. You were going to the theatre. You had a toddler. You were of an age where you had a free bus pass. But now we are becoming a nation of early birds; 5pm is the new 8pm and restaurants are adapting accordingly. Special early-evening menus are on the rise. At Skye Gyngell's Spring restaurant in Covent Garden, a £30 'scratch' menu – featuring dishes made using waste produce such as a moreish bread-and-butter pudding made from yesterday's loaves – is served between 5.30pm and 6.15pm. Over at Bulrush in Bristol, which opened in 2015 and has held a Michelin star since 2018, diners can enjoy a mini version of its signature tasting menu three days a week at 5.30pm. Instead of £90 for nine courses, you pay £65 for six. The Portland in London, which has held a Michelin star since 2015, offers four courses for £55 between 5.30pm and 6.30pm. Its standard post-6.30pm tasting menu will set you back a steep £110 while a three course meal from its à la carte costs £89. Daniel Morgenthau, co-founder of the Woodhead restaurant group, which operates five restaurants including the Portland, said they originally planned to run the early menu for a month in January to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Thanks to its popularity, six months on it has become a firm fixture. The cost of living is one of the factors driving demand. Morgenthau describes the Portland menu, which changes monthly, as 'striking a really nice balance between providing the full Portland experience and a lower price point'. George Livesey, chef and founder of Bulrush, said that prior to 2020 his 8pm tables were taken for casual dining by 'a much younger crowd' than now. Nowadays 90% were booked for special occasions. Part of the reason he introduced his earlier and cheaper menu was to attract the younger demographic back. 'This gives people a chance to experience a decent Michelin-sized tasting menu at a not outrageous price point,' Livesey said. Even east London hipsters are embracing toddler dining times. At Silo, the world's first zero-waste restaurant in Hackney Wick, 6pm diners can opt for an abbreviated version of its full tasting menu. At Pophams in London Fields, a 6pm booking gets you a £30 three-course set menu featuring dishes such as goat's cheese ravioli and an apple crumble croissant from its bakery. The trend is also having a knock-on effect on pre-dinner drinking. The Firmdale group, which includes London's the Covent Garden hotel, has introduced a Martini hour. From 5pm to 6pm it serves them shaken or stirred – with free chips. Hybrid working is another driving factor. Since January, OpenTable, an online reservation site, has seen a 6% rise in bookings for tables between 4pm and 6pm in Britain. Morgenthau describes the 5.30pm slot as 'busier than ever' across his group. The TWaT trend (Tuesday to Thursday in-office work) has also resulted in the traditional end-of-week dinner moving to Thursday. 'We get a lot of couples that come into central London to work,' Morgenthau said. 'They want to meet up before heading home but don't want to be out too late.' This week Livesey had a customer who flagged on their 5.30pm booking that they needed to leave by 8pm to catch a train home. Morgenthau said: 'What creates a good atmosphere in a restaurant isn't the time. The lovely hum comes from having a full room.' It seems nowadays you're more likely to find that before 8pm.
The Independent
07-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
American law firms are caving into Trump's bullying – but guess who'll pay the price?
The late Robert Morgenthau, the New York District Attorney for more than three decades, was a great raconteur. He told a wonderful story about being sent down from New Haven in the late 1940s to interview at a newly formed law firm in New York called Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Morgenthau's first interview was with Lloyd Garrison, who had been the first chair of the National Labor Relations Board, the National War Labor Board and the New York Board of Education. Later, as part of the NAACP board, he represented the great African-American poet Langston Hughes when he was subpoenaed by Senator Joseph McCarthy. 'What would you like to do in the law, Mr Morgenthau?' Garrison asked. 'Well, Mr Garrison, I would like to do public service.' 'No, Mr Morgenthau, you are supposed to work day and night so that I can do public service,' said Garrison. 'Good day.' The interview was over. As Morgenthau's anecdote illustrates, public service and pro bono representation of controversial clients and cases are in the founding DNA of Paul, Weiss. It hired the first Black lawyer at a major law firm in 1949, William Coleman, later a cabinet secretary in two Republican administrations. It numbers among its partners former homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson and former attorney general Loretta Lynch. So when the Trump administration goes after law firms that have represented what it considers to be political enemies, issuing orders barring lawyers from certain firms from entering federal buildings, obtaining security clearances, or granting federal contracts to any of its clients, the legal profession could anticipate that these mega-profitable, mega-firms would have the integrity and the resources to fight. The order is blatantly unconstitutional, as any first-year law student would know. But Paul, Weiss and other American mega-firms – Skadden, then Willkie Farr and Milbank – quickly caved in to this illegal and immoral pressure. Paul, Weiss agreed to a series of commitments, including to have its hiring practices audited, to contribute $40 million in legal services 'to support the administration's initiatives', and not to use or pursue any DEI policies. It also agreed to admit 'wrongdoing' on behalf of a former partner who left the firm years before to join the New York district attorney's investigation of Donald Trump. Skadden, Arps upped the ante to $100 million in Trump's pet pro bono projects. Pledging to do free work for conservative causes and to forgo diversity programmes in hiring seems to provide the template for firms looking to make a deal with the Trump administration. There is no official text of an agreement with either firm; indeed, it is not clear that there even is a written agreement, so much of the information comes from Trump's Truth Social posts. Firms have tried to suggest that they will be selecting the pro bono projects themselves rather than being told what to do. Is it reasonable to think that they will not choose projects that 'support the administration's initiatives' and risk swift retaliation? Nothing prevents the Executive Orders from being reinstated if Trump decides they do not provide the appeasement on ideology and race. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these capitulations is that they took place after a judge issued a Temporary Restraining Order against Trump's Executive Order, finding that it was presumptively in violation of multiple constitutional rights – followed quickly by two other judges issuing similar orders on behalf of two other firms that had drawn the wrath of Trump. A large group of law firms, including my law firm, Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, have filed an amicus brief in support of those firms that are fighting in court; but remarkably, none of the 20 largest law firms agreed to join the brief, and only three of the top 50 firms. Big Law is keeping its head down precisely at a time when standing together would mitigate Trump's ability to impose carnage on the law and lawyers. Why would major law firms have given in so easily, especially when early signs were that the courts would be supportive? Paul, Weiss's chair Brad Karp sent a long mea culpa that gave the game away. Karp complains that other firms tried to steal Paul, Weiss's clients and recruit Paul, Weiss lawyers. Did they succeed? Karp doesn't say. Nevertheless, he felt this was an 'existential crisis' that 'could easily have destroyed the firm'. He told Paul, Weiss that he did it for his clients and to preserve the firm's 'shared culture and values', which 'will never be subject to negotiation or compromise'. Paul, Weiss's revenues in 2024 were $2.6 billion, with profits per partner of $7.5 million. Skadden's last reported revenue was $3.3 billion with profits of $5.4 million per partner. Milbank and Willkie had nearly $2 billion in revenue and similar profit numbers. What would have happened if some clients or lawyers left and revenues dropped for a year or two, or partners made only $4 or $5 million per head – or imagine the horror, even less? Would Karp's much-lauded Paul, Weiss community have all abandoned ship for some other culture or set of values? Would their clients have said, it's been nice having your world-class representation, but if Donald Trump is mad at you, we don't want you to do our deals or litigate our cases? Paul, Weiss and the other firms' self-serving statements are true if narrowly interpreted to say: 'We are nothing more than a profit-maximising business who do some pro bono on the side to keep our associates happy and do some virtue signalling to the law schools and the bar.' The real subtext here is that these firms were willing to take no economic risk, and we think our clients would rather have lawyers with no backbone than lawyers who would fight – even when it looks like they are winning. We are afraid our lawyers' commitment to us is only as deep as our next year's results. Our culture, like the president's, is purely transactional. Karp claims he did what any smart lawyer does in high-stakes, 'bet-the-company' litigation – settle. But not everything can or should be settled. The Executive Order issued by the Trump administration was not just a business problem for Paul, Weiss and those following its lead. It is a dagger in the heart of the justice system and the rule of law. It is an early salvo in a new McCarthyism, designed to intimidate the entire legal profession and to coerce admissions of wrongdoing by lawyers doing exactly what they are supposed to do. Paul, Weiss and the others had the resources to fight and the obligation to do so; that is what other firms have done and gotten preliminary relief. They have given in quickly to bullying that was deeply wrong, and no doubt will lead to more bullying, less taking on of unpopular causes, less diversity in the profession, and more forced, false confessions of 'wrongdoing' for doing what is in the best traditions of the profession. This is 'anticipatory obedience' – not by people who are weak, but by people who are strong. It will happen again to new targets, and these firms have made the path that much easier and the prospects for the profession and the rule of law that much more perilous.
Asharq Al-Awsat
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Is a ‘Trump in Tehran' Operetta Possible?
"Trump in Tehran!" This is the name of an operetta imagined by some American advocates of Realpolitik calling themselves Council on Foreign Relations rather than the sobriquet that G.K. Chesterton would have suggested: The Club of Queer Trades. The 'Real' part of the English-German cliché is misleading; what is offered has nothing to do with reality but a fantasized perception of it. The Realpolitik crowd looks at a country, decides who is Big Cheese at any given time, and tries to make a deal with him regardless of ethical, idealistic and even geostrategic considerations. One prominent advocate of the approach was Hans Morgenthau, a German-American academic. Like his fellow German Karl Marx who looked for 'laws of history' Morgenthau tried to find 'the laws of politics' as applied to international relations.' In his Weltanschauung, the concept of power was the overriding goal in international relations as it defined national interests. Morgenthau's analysis had found echoes in President Franklin Roosevelt's administration even in the final phases of the Second World War. It was in that spirit that Roosevelt through what was to be marketed as Track-II diplomacy, tried to find alternatives to Adolf Hitler inside Nazi Germany. Later, Realpolitik inspired both George Kennan and Henry Kissinger. Kissinger's détente roadshow with the Soviet Empire and the People's Republic of China became textbook examples of successful Realpolitik. The same method was also used to 'solve' the so-called Palestinian Problem, to rein-in the Kim gang in Pyongyang and persuade the mullahs of Tehran to enter the tent, at President Barack Obama's invitation and do their pissing from inside. In all those cases, the Realpolitik tribe high-fived its success but helped prolong the life of regimes doomed to crumble under the weight of their ignorance, error and crimes. For peddlers of Realpolitik, Kissinger's China experiment has become the referential point for successful diplomacy with the operetta 'Nixon in China' as its Broadway narrative. According to it, the US president forgot and forgave almost half a century of enmity and went to Beijing, had a few rounds of mao-tai with the 'Supreme Helmsman' and made the world a safer place for everyone including America. In the same vein, why shouldn't another US president go to Tehran to drink some fizzy water with the 'Supreme Guide' and close the 50-year-long history of hostage-taking, terrorism, vicious propaganda, sanctions and military confrontation? The question was first raised during Obama's tenure with hangers-on like John Kerry musing about an 'Obama in Tehran' operetta that would send 'Nixon in China' into oblivion. The Broadway rendition of 'Nixon in China' suffered from the speeding-up technique that made the Keystone Cops reels funnier. Seeing the operetta, one might think that Nixon flew to Beijing in a jiffy, waved a magic wand and, hey presto, Red China became as white as snow. That isn't what happened. The first contact between the Nixon Administration and Red China was established with the help of Iran and Pakistan early in 1970 and led to Kissinger's first visit to Beijing in was followed by Nixon's visit in 1972. Nixon sent one of his most senior diplomats, the future President George W H Bush, to Beijing as a semi-official envoy for a year of monitoring China's compliance with the deals made step by-step. It was only at the end of a seven-year long probation that the US extended full diplomatic recognition and normal relations to the People's Republic in 1979. In those years, China changed the way the US wanted it to change. To start with the fear of a hardline military clique emerging as Mao's successor was removed with the 'accidental' elimination only six months after Kissinger's secret visit to Beijing of Field Marshall Lin Biao, the standard-bearer of the anti-American faction in the Communist Party. Next, the Chinese leadership moved fast to conclude the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that regarded the 'American paper tiger' as the arch-enemy of global revolutionaries. The Gang of Four consisting of Mao's wife Jian Qing, Shanghai Mayor Yao Wenyuan and self-styled theoreticians Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen were booted out of key positions and, later, even put on trial for 'crimes against the revolution.' In 1971, covering a visit to China by Empress Farah and Premier Amir- Abbas Hoveyda of Iran, I had an opportunity to talk to Mrs. Mao in Beijing and Yao Wenyuan in Shanghai both of whom were still adamant that 'American Imperialism' would be defeated across the globe. During those seven eventful years, China steadily moved away from its status as a vehicle for global revolution to reshape itself as a normal state behaving as normal states, good or bad, do. The US wanted China to abandon its proxies in Angola, Mozambique, Southwest Africa and South Yemen, which the Beijing leadership did as quickly as it could. That helped Iran crush the guerrillas operating under the label 'People's Front for the Liberation of Occupied Arabian Gulf' (PFLOAG). With Hua Guofeng becoming Prime Minister and Deng Xiaoping emerging as 'strongman,' China adopted a clearly pro-US profile as both nations regarded the Soviet Union as a rival if not an actual threat. The Nixon-in-China episode was about hardnosed diplomacy which had little to do with Realpolitik. The Americans told the Chinese: If you want us to do something that you want, first deliver what we want. The Chinese complied and were rewarded. Applying the Chinese model to normalization with the mullahs will have to start with a long laundry list that Iran has to deal with in domestic and foreign policy fields. Is the 'Supreme Guide' Ali Khamenei ready for a seven-year ordeal in the hope of securing relief at the end? Does he have the clout that Mao had when he agreed to dramatically change course? Will he even last that long?
