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New Statesman
a day ago
- Business
- New Statesman
All hail Emperor Trump
The US President is on a 4-day trip to his golf courses in Scotland. He has met with Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Wielding the 'bully-boy' threat of trade tariffs, the President is enjoying unprecedented influence. But should European leaders learn from the more combative approaches taken by Canada and France? Megan Gibson joins Tom McTague on the New Statesman podcast. [See also: Can Starmer and Trump come to an agreement on Gaza?] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
New Statesman
5 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Trump goes to Scotland
Photo byI met my first full-on MAGA type this week. I could tell, because he was wearing a baseball cap with 'TRUMP' written across it. This being Scotland – Edinburgh, to be precise – there might have been a chance of someone flipping it off his head, had he not been around 6'3', seemingly made of bricks and, I soon learned, a veteran of the US Navy. He was probably safe. We fell into conversation, which involved him almost weepily describing what he saw as the US President's astonishing virtues. The economy was flying, immigration was being crushed, and America's enemies were on the run – as were the 'pathetic' Democrats. When I (gently) put the alternative case to him I was dismissed as a bit of a lefty, which doesn't happen to me very often. He was heading back to the States on Friday, just as his hero is expected to arrive in Scotland on a four-day trip. Trump is visiting his golf courses in Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire, and is also due to meet Keir Starmer and John Swinney. 'He'll sort those boys out,' said Mr Maga with a cackle, before heading off into the night. Perhaps. Although, according to the Scottish left, it is Swinney who should be doing the sorting out. The First Minister has been told by activists in his own party that he should put pressure on Trump to withdraw US support for Israel. Nadia El-Nakla, the wife of Swinney's predecessor Humza Yousaf, and who has family in Gaza, said he should demand that Trump 'compel' Israel to step back. Now, in Scottish terms, Swinney is a powerful man, but I'm not sure his leverage extends that far. I certainly wouldn't open with it. A tokenistic mention is probably as much as can be expected. There has been the usual outrage that this most controversial of presidents is even setting foot on Scottish soil. Some are furious that the First Minister is meeting him. Many more are angry that Trump will return later this year for a state visit, when he will meet the King at Windsor. Trump is beyond the pale, a brutal dictator, and the UK should basically restrict any engagement, hunker down and wait for him to leave office, is their argument. But not even the leadership of the SNP – a party not immune to daft foreign policy thinking – believes this is a sensible idea. The man runs the most powerful country in the world, and is doing so with gangsterish swagger – bombing, tariff-ing and ripping up the old order across the planet. Whatever your view of him, he is probably the most consequential US president since Reagan, and must be accommodated. Hence, Ian Murray, the Scottish Secretary, promised a 'warm welcome'. 'The office of the president of the United States and the office of the prime minister are ones that work very, very closely together… We should make sure those relationships are in place because it's important for our defence, our security, our economy,' he added. Quite. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Politics requires a certain level of hypocrisy, and those in power who have little time for Trump will have to paint on a smile, roll out the flattery and show him a good time. That is what Murray is doing – in 2019 he signed a motion in the Commons accusing the president of 'misogynism, racism and xenophobia'. I doubt his view of the man has changed, but he is unlikely to repeat the charge this weekend. There will be protests, of course, and fair enough. Perhaps the most magnificently Scottish protest of all time happened during a previous, pre-presidential Trump visit to the Scottish Parliament in 2012, when a man named Stan Blackley rubbed a balloon on the tycoon's head, making his hair stand on end. 'I just found myself behind Donald Trump with a balloon one day and did what any sane and sensible person would have done,' Blackley explained. No-one will get that close this time – a huge security operation has been launched by Scottish police to prevent disruption. Trump will want to talk to Starmer about trade and Ukraine and the Middle East, no doubt, but he is also expected to make a pitch for Turnberry, his Ayrshire golf course, to host the Open Championship. The course last hosted the event in 2009. Given Trump's obsession with the game, and his fragile ego, it might be wise for both Starmer and Swinney to offer their support for the idea. He is also likely to be asked about drilling in the North Sea, having said ahead of his visit that 'They have so much oil there. They should get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil.' Trump creates headlines wherever he goes. It's Scotland's turn to experience Maga in full effect. [Further reading: The abomination of Obama's nation] Related
New Statesman
7 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
From the archive: Christopher Hitchens on Michael Foot
Michael Foot on the march. Photo byIn November 1980, Michael Foot ascended to leader of the opposition, never to become prime minister. Christopher Hitchens, with whom Foot had exchanged furious letters in the NS correspondence pages two years earlier, picked his moment to review Foot's latest book. In the following passages, who is being assessed by whom? 'It is the superlative ease, the unruffled assurance with which that mind works, which first impresses those who meet him. One can hardly hear the mechanism working at all and yet the results have a perfect precision. Without any sense of strain or pretention, that marvellous instrument absorbs all the arguments presented to it and sifts from them an endless flow of conclusions framed in smooth, yet vibrant English.' Or, in a comparable vein: 'What [he] so valiantly stood for could have saved his country from the Hungry Thirties and the Second World War… genius.' The first paragraph is an appreciation of Lord Goodman. The second is a paean to Sir Oswald Mosley. The author in both cases is Michael Foot. He there exhibits (as he does at much greater length in Debts of Honour) the three distinctive traits of his character as author and as politician. These are a deep reverence for the Establishment, especially for its more gamey ornaments, a fascination with certain reactionary rebels, and a prose style which relies on hyperbole for such effect as it can command. There is a fourth ingredient, only hinted at in the above. It is a pervasive and amusing variety of chauvinist Anglophilia; very highly developed and of an intensity usually found only among Americans. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe This ought to make for an enjoyable if not a very enlightening read. But it doesn't matter. The treacly exaggerations start to cloy after a while; it's like eating a whole box of chocolate creams. Swift is 'the foremost exponent of lucidity in the English language'. Max Aitken was 'as handsome as Apollo, as swiftly-moving as Mercury'. Isaac Foot 'must have been just about the happiest man who ever lived'. Randolph Churchill 'set the Thames, the Hudson, the Tiber or the Danube on fire with his boiling invective'. There is no subtlety, no light or shade. Everybody has to be larger than life. Foot was apprenticed to flattery at the court of Beaverbrook, and learned his trade well. The longest essay in this collection of profiles and memoirs concerning the old monster himself. He would not be able to claim that Foot did not take him at his own valuation. Apparently Beaverbrook favoured the 'rumbustious, marauding private enterprise system which had enabled him to become a multi- or as he would call it, a Maxi-millionaire'. And which enabled him to keep Foot (and to a more parsimonious extent, Tribune) in fair old style. Luckily, Beaverbrook was quite nice if you really knew him, as well as being 'a volcano of laughter which went on erupting till the end'. This rebarbative style is more of a wade when it is used to praise a good man than when it is employed to whitewash a villain. Ignazio Silone was a very great writer and a very fine comrade. But he was not 'the New Machiavelli' and didn't pretend to be. Bertrand Russell was and remains an inspiration in philosophy and politics. But who regards him as a 'Philosopher Englishman'? And how many takers for the following estimate? 'He became one of the chief glories of our nation and people, and I defy anyone who loves the English language and the English heritage to think of him without a glow of patriotism.' What the hell, one is moved to inquire, has that got to do with it? It might be truer to say that Russell would resent very much any attempt to annex him and his thought in such a way. A man who gave so much of himself to other countries, and who was so opposed to the crappy orthodoxies of British arrogance, cannot be captured in lines and thoughts like Foot's. Not that Foot's admiration is feigned. I should say that most of his essay on Thomas Paine was inspired by a piece Russell wrote in 1934 – except that Foot inserts a factual error about Jefferson that Russell did not make. This tendency to hero-worship results in some very bizarre formulations. Say what you like about Disraeli ('The Good Tory'), it is difficult to recognise anything 'Byronic' in his career or in his novels. Yet that is the precise epithet which Foot selects for him. There is a great deal yet to be learned about Robert Blatchford, but it will not be found out by calling him 'just about the best writer of books about books there ever was'. For one thing, it elides the obvious about Blatchford – his miserable declension from an affected socialism to an unaffected racialism and insularity. Perhaps Foot finds the reminiscence an uncomfortable one. The obverse of Foot's credulity about people and institutions (who now remembers his slavishly adoring biography of Harold Wilson?) is an attractive streak of sentiment. He manages to enlist a kind of sympathy when he writes about HN Brailsford or about Vicky. Even though the Brailsford essay is clotted with over-writing ('glorious', 'imperishable' etc, etc) one can see that Foot does not need to strain for effect on this occasion. The subject matter tells its own story. But all the rest is rambling and bluff. Apparently, Sarah Churchill, 'given her magnificent head', could have salvaged England in the reign of Queen Anne. Apparently 'the magnanimous English Left, led as usual by the Irish', came to the rescue of Jonathan Swift. These re-workings have at least the merit of improbability (especially in the latter case, coming as it does from the Orangeman's best friend; the man who dealt them a new hand to buy Callaghan an extra month). I don't think that Foot can ever have blotted out a line. The collection is much harder to read than it must have been to write. Did he, for instance, really mean to say the following about his poor wife? 'The room of her own, the room where she works, when she is not cooking, gardening, shopping, cleaning, making beds, entertaining and the rest, is a feminist temple, a shrine dedicated to the cause of women's rights.' If this is one of Foot's arch bits of self-mockery, I think we should be told. When a man can write about Beaverbrook that: 'I loved him, not merely as a friend but as a second father…' One needs a stone of some kind to separate parody from the real thing. The point about hero-worship is not that you may be worshipping the wrong hero. It is that you surrender your reason and suspend your critical faculties. Foot's book on Aneurin Bevan, though written with much greater care than the present collection, is a disappointment because it makes its subject into a devotional figure, and thus greatly exaggerates his real importance in our time. Issues like Churchill's conduct of the war, Tito's treatment of political opposition, or the Russian invasion of Hungary are shaped in a Procrustean fashion to fit Bevan's own role. The book cannot be read (unlike, say, Isaac Deutscher's biography of Trotsky) as a guide to the period in which the central figure operated. Still less to any of these portraits fulfil that necessary function. Once you start calling Beaverbrook a 'buccaneer', it is only a short while before you find you have written this: 'The military vision of Churchill and his chief advisers was still fixed on other and lesser objectives and it was Beaverbrook who, within the Cabinet, within the Government machine, seized and sustained the initiative to turn the national energies along the road of commonsense.' Eh? Does Foot read his articles through when he's finished? Foot is never happier than when writing about the second world war. It is a favourite theme in his contemporary speeches as well. He seems to remember a period of social harmony, democratic impulse and social innovation. His famous polemic Guilty Men (which he penned under the nom de guerre of Cato) has an account of Dunkirk which could have come from the Boys Own Paper. Such an attitude, which might have made agitational sense in wartime, has more than outlived its usefulness. I remember hearing Foot invoke the spirit of Dunkirk in the Commons on the night Labour lost the vote of confidence in 1979; it was ghastly to hear the titters of the Tories and to see the embarrassment on the Labour benches. In 1940, also, it might have been permissible for a socialist to write as if Britain did not have an Empire (though Orwell, for one, kept insisting that the subject be remembered). Foot contrives to daub his portrait of Beaverbrook as if the man had never been an imperialist at all. He does have the grace to recall 'Max' at the time of Munich, but only to mention it as an aberration. For the rest, this beautiful friendship, and its seminal role in Our Island Story, is preserved and mummified for ever in scented prose. It seems almost unkind to disturb it now. Because Foot is a charming old ham in one way, and one should not be surprised at his liking for fellow hams. He has given plenty of harmless pleasure to hopeful audiences in this way. Some might say that his present attachment to the most flagrant conservatism is a result of a 'mellowing' process. Others talk darkly of a 'sell-out'. But, as far as can be discerned, Foot is quite right to claim consistency in his own record. He has never been otherwise than a poseur; moving smoothly, for instance, from CND into Callaghan's inner cabinet on the Cruise missiles and back into irrelevant pacifist attitudes this week. Like Disraeli, he is a quick-change artist. The objection comes when he dresses up this act as socialism, and thus disfigures a good idea. (Just as he here proposes Disraeli as a radical – because he once gave a civil audience to that old fraud and chauvinist H. M. Hyndman.) In his brief essay on Vicky, Foot asks the reader, 'And, if he had lived, which of us would have escaped the lash?' Good question. I believe that there does exist a link between Foot's gullibility as a person, his credulity as a profile-writer, and his disqualifications as a politician. The same weakness of character that makes him fawn in print makes him a conformist in politics. The same glutinous style (he even writes of the acid Defoe that 'the truth he had bottled up within himself for so long poured out in golden spate') has its analogue in the gross sentimentality which marks his public speaking. A good test is this. Listen to a Foot speech, whether made on a party conference platform or in the House of Commons. Mark the dewy response it sometimes gets. Then grab a copy of Hansard or the conference report and read the thing. Full of evasions, crammed with corny special pleading, usually rounded off with an appeal for unity and generally couched, behind its rhetorical mask, in terms of extreme political orthodoxy. A locus classicus here is his defence of Mrs Gandhi's merciless Emergency, where a crude and reactionary political manoeuvre was defended by Foot as an inheritance from the splendid days of Congress, and as a necessary insurance against 'destabilisation'. Another relationship exists in the matter of detail. Whether he is writing about Tom Paine, or justifying the last Labour government's breaking of the firemen's strike, Foot likes to deal in sweeping generalities. He once echoed Lamb's toast to Hazlitt, 'Confusion to Mathematics', by proposing the toast 'Confusion to Economics'. How predictable, then, that he would become the stoutest defender of the most dismally conventional economic policy when he got anywhere near power. And how regrettable, when discussing Tom Paine, that he should say, with habitual absolutism, that Jefferson 'never wavered' in his high opinion of Paine. It is important, in any evaluation of Paine's American years, to recall the coldness which did interrupt his relationship with Jefferson. These details matter. In this country it is pretty easy to get a reputation as a radical. The standard of our politicians is such that, when they prove literate at all, they are hailed as Romantics, Renaissance men, Revivalists. The timing of this book could not have been more fortunate; we shall be able to examine both vainglorious claims at once. The best interim obituary may be that written about Foot's hero Disraeli by Lady Gwendolen Cecil: 'He was always making use of convictions that he did not share, pursuing objects which he could not own, manoeuvring his party into alliances which though unobjectionable from his own standpoint were discreditable and indefensible from theirs. It was an atmosphere of pervading falseness which involved his party as well as himself…' [See also: From the archive: The apotheosis of Tammany Jim] Related
New Statesman
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Run Sister Run is a winding descent into tragedy
Photo by Marc Brenner In classical Greek tragedy the audience is forced to watch as the hero sleepwalks towards their fate. In the playwright Chloë Moss's Run Sister Run, this descent into tragedy takes place in reverse. Proleptic irony is swapped out for Chekhovian drug addiction. We first meet two Irish sisters, Connie (Jo Herbert) and Ursula (Kelly Gough) in middle age. Through a series of flashbacks and call-backs, the vicious cyclical patterns that have shaped their relationship over four decades become clear. Ursula wrangles misfortune after misfortune, tangled in self-harm, surrogacy and indeterminable pills. With its folding-chair metal seating, the brick basement of the Arcola Theatre is an apt venue for the themes explored by director Marlie Haco's production: intimate and tragically uncomfortable. Designer Tomás Palmer's set is stripped back: upturned buckets and dried flowers are the few props that accompany a thin, horizontal mirror suspended at head-height. Alex Forey's white flood-lighting spills down from above the mirror, with an occasional strobe effect between scenes inducing a sense of chaos. Palmer's costume design is naturalistic and simple; ultimately, the message of the play is that tragedies like these can happen to normal people. Gough's vocal endurance is impressive. She regularly lapses into drug-induced shrieks, but is also capable of tender moments that juxtapose with the madness. More restrained, Herbert's talent is also on show, as she demonstrates the reversal of Connie's social mobility, with her middle-class English drone gradually slipping back into a broad Irish accent. The dance segments that take place in scene transitions are incongruous and discordant, untethered from the narrative. But the play's core themes of nature vs nurture and codependence are well articulated. Run Sister Run leaves the audience deep in thought, even if those thoughts sometimes include: 'What's going on now? Run Sister Run Arcola Theatre, London E8 [See also: Evita for the West End masses] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
New Statesman
21-07-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
The opportunity of expanding free school meals
Photo by School Food Review Last monthmarked a defining moment for the government. Coming up to their one-year anniversary in office, Labour took their most meaningful step yet towards honouring their manifesto commitments to break down barriers to opportunity and to make this the healthiest generation of children ever. The relentless combined efforts of celebrities such as Marcus Rashford, Jamie Oliver and Emma Thompson, leading health and education experts, young people and parents, politicians across the political spectrum, many NGOs including the Feed the Future campaign (an initiative run by the School Food Review), all finally culminated in a game changing commitment from government; Kier Starmer announced that all children in families receiving Universal Credit in England will become able to register for free school meals, helping an estimated 500,000 children who previously did not meet the criteria to qualify despite living in poverty. 'A few weeks ago, I met with Stephen Morgan and told him straight: the current system is broken — too many kids are falling through the cracks. So hearing the government actually listened feels like a huge step forward. But this isn't the end. We need proper investment in food quality, shorter queues, longer lunchtimes, and canteens that don't feel chaotic,' said Yusuf, a Bite Back Campaigner. This investment will be genuinely life changing for the children impacted. Over the years we have heard haunting stories of children hiding in the playground or pretending to eat out of empty lunchboxes because they're too embarrassed to let anyone see they can't afford anything for lunch, and teachers digging into their own pockets to give hungry children some food. Hopefully this will now come to an end. But expanding Free School Meals is not just a fair intervention; it's a smart economic one. Children who are not distracted by their stomachs rumbling from hunger do better at school, ultimately resulting in higher earning potential, a stronger workforce and better off economy. To realise this full potential, a clear next step should be to automatically register children who qualify, removing the unnecessarily arduous application process which currently prevents many eligible children from benefitting. Beyond this, there is an exciting prospect for government to make their investment in Free School Meals go even further. Ministers would be wise to recognise the scale of the opportunity before them and seize the chance to revolutionise school food. With children spending 190 days a year in school, the school food system offers huge potential just waiting to be tapped into. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe A healthy school lunch can provide essential nourishment for children to grow up strong and healthy. The need for this is undeniable when looking at the latest worrying government stats on overweight and dental decay in children as young as five years old. With children on average consuming half the recommended intake of fruit and veg and twice the maximum recommended intake of sugar, improving the quality of what our children are given to eat in school creates a real opportunity to turn the tide on children's health. 'As a parent, I'm thrilled the government is extending free school meals. This is such a huge step forward – every child deserves a proper, nutritious meal to help them learn, play and enjoy their school day. I'd love to see the government go even further to improve the quality of food offered to children, especially in secondary schools where the options can be really hit or miss,' said Mandy, a Sustain Children's Food Ambassador. Thankfully, government has also announced a review of the School Food Standards – the very outdated, mandatory-but-not-enforced guidance intended to help schools serve children food that is healthy, but in need of ambitious changes to deliver this aim. To really be effective, monitoring of compliance is also needed to hold schools to account and support given to them when falling short. Even better, these changes will make expanding Free School Meals deliver even greater long-term financial savings to our drowning healthcare system. Government could go even further still in their ambition. School food creates an ideal opportunity for government to demonstrate some much-needed support for British farmers by updating the rules on procurement, simultaneously benefiting local economies while ensuring our children are eating more minimally processed foods produced here in the UK. The power of food in shaping our society should never be underestimated. The culture created in school canteens, eating together and trying new foods, can foster community and establish healthy eating habits that will stick with children for life. If government choose to be bold, this could be the first step in unlocking the full potential of school food and turning it into a real national asset. Related
