The Observer — 11.10.2026

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THE OBSERVER

Established 1791

In 1936, crowds in America witnessed the last public hanging. The Trump administration now plans to livestream a firing squad.

The return of the public execution

By Giles Whittell News, page 10

Russian interference

Burnham confirms

Kremlin role in

Brexit referendum

'Yes, there was... there was state-sponsored interference in the British democratic process'

Andy Burnham, prime minister

News page 8

A wing and a prayer

Eight new poems

on birds and nature

by Simon Armitage

New Review

Her villain era

The new queen

of the castle,

Maya Jama

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THE OBSERVER VIEW

Green with shame

Zionism isn't racism: Britain must support the Jewish state and the creation of a Palestinian state without succumbing to soap-box rhetoric on either

T he Green party is reeling from a fortnight of self-harm. It increased its vote share in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection but still came a distant second to Labour. Its candidate was the party leader, Zack Polanski, who looks fatally

diminished – and not just because he lost.

Days before the vote, Polanski let his party approve the motion asserting that “Zionism is racism”, without voting himself. The charge that Zionism equals racism disgraces those who make it: it smears the state of Israel, denies the modern history of Jews and cheapens the fight against racism. The United Nations passed a resolution in 1975 making the same claim. Sixteen years later, the world body revoked it – the vast majority of countries regretting that inflammatory act of political grandstanding.

On a much smaller stage in Brighton, a faction of the Green party exhumed the old soundbite that, in effect, labels most Jews racist and announced its support for a unitary Palestinian state, thereby seeking to wipe Israel from the map. This was “From the river to the sea” not as slogan but as party policy. This appears to have been engineered by Corbynite entryists rejected by Labour and looking for a new home.

Many Greens, not least a majority of the party's MPs, are appalled by what they've done. The vote turned what was, just months ago, a party of hope into a pointless, angry soap box. And it has made Polanski a laughing stock.

But there was a broader lesson, too. Three years after the atrocities of October 7, performative grandstanding on the Israel-Palestine question benefits no one, especially those without a clear

purpose, a clear stake in the argument or a firm grasp of history.

Everyone is entitled to a passionately held view on Israel, its leaders and the crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The evidence of Israel's war crimes, the genocidal intent of some of its leaders and the indefensible massacre of tens of thousands of innocent lives continues to mount.

Israel is approaching a critically important election on 27 October. This newspaper has no more right to lecture Israeli voters than does a political party in another country, but we can offer a few observations about Israel.

The first is that the country of i founding – Jewish in identity but liberal in outlook and rooted in the rule of law – has changed profoundly. A nation that promised to be a beacon of democracy has become illiberal, martial and a law unto itself; the state that was founded in the shadow of the Holocaust on the hopes of safety, dignity and freedom has visited cruelty and war, wholesale, on its

neighbours. It is tearing itself apart at home, as well as sowing division around the world.

Second, Israel's rightward shift began before the October 7 attacks but accelerated after them. Though perpetrated by Hamas, they were a catastrophic national security failure on Benjamin Netanyahu's watch for which he has not yet been held accountable. Israel's

militarism and autocratic lurch do not belong to Netanyahu alone, but he has long presided over it. Any shift as a result of the election away from his hardline ethno-nationalist politics would be better than the status quo. It is a measure of how deeply the world needs Israel to change that whatever new is, new is better.

In these circumstances, what can Britain do in, and with, Israel that is both constructive and progressive?

It can work towards restoring the full status and staffing of the UK's consulate in Jerusalem.

Twenty British diplomats have

d Miliband's trade embargo on illegal West Bank settlements but they need to be there as physical proof of Britain's commitment to helping Palestinians. It can disavow hard-left demagoguery about Zionism for what it is, and reiterate British support for a two-state solution, however impractical it may seem to Israelis who consider

themselves in a state of war with their neighbours in 2026.

It is clearly true that, as David Aaronovitch put it last week, “the state that fought the Yom Kippur War isn’t going to abolish itself because some trendy prat from Stoke Newington really, really wants it to”. It’s also true that, in the long term, living side by

side with a sovereign Palestinian state is more practical than being an international pariah.

Trump and Putin are the Crabbe and Goyle of the new world order

To file under "self-serving and predictable but still somehow

astonishing": Donald Trump, squeezed on diesel supply as the midterms approach, has done a deal with Moscow.

Vladimir Putin has agreed to release a total of 1.8m tonnes of diesel between now and the end of the year to

lower world prices and ease the pressure on American farmers and hauliers.

Trump announced the deal in a caps-heavy Truth Social post on Friday, stating falsely that the US was in total control of the Strait of Hormuz and promising voters diesel prices would fall “in record numbers, and fast”. They did fall, by 4.5%, on the announcement. Whether the dip will last is unclear: 1.8m tonnes is barely four days' supply for the US haulage industry. But the signal is what matters.

Trump couldn't care less about sabotaging a grinding four-year sanctions effort to shut off funds flowing to Russia's war machine if it might save a handful

of Republican seats in the

midwest, and Putin was there

for him in a pinch.

Some time, we must hope, the full story of this relationship will be told, and Andy Burnham has taken a step towards piecing it together. He tells Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart's The Rest Is Politics: Leading podcast (news, page 8) that, on entering Downing Street, he asked if there'd been Russian interference with the 2016 Brexit vote, and was given (presumably by sources that only brief senior ministers) “the clear answer that yes, there was”. Trump has long been mocked for claiming he knew Vote Leave would win.

Perhaps he did.

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Overheard 'I'm just eating crackers and drinking a cup of tea. Nothing really dramatic'

How writer Anne Carson celebrated winning the Nobel prize for literature

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The week in brief

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Grandfather to take Sara Sharif's siblings

A Pakistani court has given Sara Sharif's paternal grandfather guardianship of her siblings after years of legal limbo. Surrey County Council had been trying to bring back the children to the UK but withdrew from the case in June. Sharif's father and stepmother murdered her in 2023, when she was 10 years old. They fled to Pakistan with Sharif's siblings, who were found by police at their grandfather's house. The adults flew back to the UK and were arrested. They were both sentenced to life in prison in 2024.

Price of Nanotyrannus skeleton 'Jodi' – on sale at Sotheby's later this month

A fur seal takes a hearing test at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Scientists in Australia have trained seals and sea lions to respond to hearing tests as part of research into how they are affected by human-made noises. Christine Erbe/AFP, Getty

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Man dies after tiger attack in Yorkshire

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Andrew ‘in remarkable form’ after legal win

A man has died after being attacked by a tiger at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster. South Yorkshire. Police were called to the park yesterday afternoon after reports of a man entering the tiger enclosure. They said the tiger attacked the man, resulting in “serious injury”, and later confirmed he had died at the scene. Police urged the public not to share videos of the incident. The park was evacuated and officers are in touch with the man’s family. “The tiger remained in the enclosure following the incident and there is no wider risk to the public,” South Yorkshire police said.

Friends of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor say he feels vindicated following his legal win over Thames Valley Police. A high court judge ruled that search warrants allowing officers to raid the homes of the former royal were unlawful. The King's brother was arrested on 19 February over allegations that he had leaked sensitive commercial documents to Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied any wrongdoing. On Friday it emerged that the King had loaned him £1.5m to settle a repair bill as part of the deal to end his lease at Royal Lodge. Friends are rallying around him as he takes the first steps towards trying to clear his name. "After the salami slicing of his entire life... he's still in remarkable form," a friend said.

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ICJ judge wins Nobel prize as Trump fumes

A judge at the International Criminal Court and the former UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, was awarded the Nobel peace prize on Friday. Pillay chaired the UN commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory that last year concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Receiving the prize, she said: "If you clap a little bit more, I may share

this prize with Trump." The US president criticised Norway after the announcement and imposed new sanctions on the ICC. "We will not forget, Norway, that you didn't give this prize," he said.

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Gene therapy could partly restore sight

The Observer news matrix

Research has shown that gene therapy can partly restore sight in blind people. Optogenetic therapy, based on technology that turns

nerve cells on and off and won the 2026 Nobel prize in medicine, had partly restored the vision of a blind person in 2021. But this larger trial followed up on the results of the original participants and a further nine people. All participants were affected by retinitis pigmentosa, which causes cells in the retina to lose function. Prof Botond Roska, lead author of the study, aims to work towards high-resolution vision restoration within the next 10 years.

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Dickens biographer finds Oliver inspiration

Charles Dickens biographer Theresa Musgrove has unearthed newspaper reports that could explain the inspiration for Oliver Twist. She found reports from 1836 telling the story of Alice Shepherd, a young girl who endured solitary confinement in a workhouse in Hendon, after a magistrate sent her to be “punished” when she dared to ask permission to go for a walk. In the novel, published a year later, Oliver is sent to solitary confinement for daring to ask for a second helping of gruel, with his plea, “Please, sir, I want some more.” Musgrove said: “When you read the report of her punishment, it is almost, word for word, like a description of Oliver Twist.”

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Endangered tortoises thriving in Seychelles

A survey of the world's largest giant tortoise population has discovered the endangered species is thriving in the Seychelles. Researchers found 180,000 Aldabra giant tortoises are living on the Seychelles island the Aldabra Atoll. In the last few centuries, giant tortoises were

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Long stories short

● The extended heat waves over the summer have caused the worst harvest for UK potatoes since the 1950s, experts say.

● Two Renoir paintings stolen from a French museum in September have been recovered.

\- Voters in the Peruvian town of Queropalca have elected a mayor named Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores.

● Kew Gardens has launched a public appeal to raise £1m towards the cost of renovating its famous Victorian Palm House.

hunted and exploited almost to extinction. Aldabra is one one of two places where giant tortoises are still found in the wild. In their other habitat, Galápagos, the population is much smaller. Dr Frauke Fleischer-Dogley, CEO of the Seychelles Islands Foundation, said this is what “commitment to conservation can achieve” and that the discovery was “wonderful news for Seychelles, for the world”.

On the cover

Spectators at a public execution in Kentucky, circa 1936. FPG/Getty Images

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Emirati owner of Manchester City was given knighthood during scandal years

Royal investor received the award in 2013, during a time when the football club was later found to be hiding the true source of millions of pounds in funding

Jon Ungoed-Thomas

The Emirati royal who owns Manchester City received an honorary knighthood from Britain at a time when the club was found to be running a scheme to disguise his company's money as sponsorship income.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan was given the honour on a state visit in 2013, when he attended a lunch at Windsor Castle and heard Queen Elizabeth praise Emirati investments in Britain, including the Manchester City takeover.

In 2023, he led the United Arab Emirates delegation to the UK for the coronation of King Charles, meeting him at a Buckingham Palace reception on the eve of the ceremony. He told the King how keen UAE was to strengthen historical relations for the benefit of both countries.

The ties between the Emirati Sheikh and King Charles heighten the stakes in what is already the most reputationally damaging and politically fraught scandal in British football.

Sheikh Mansour meets the King at Buckingham Palace in 2023. WAM

Andy Burnham, who was mayor of Greater Manchester before becoming prime minister, initially said he would be “really concerned” to see Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group sell the club, only for Downing Street to walk back his comments. But the prime minister is not the only consequential figure in the UK to have a personal connection with City’s owners.

Mansour is an enthusiast for Britain's royal pageantry and traditions. In 2009 he supported the first performance outside Europe of a Household Cavalry display known as the Musical Ride. Thirty horses were flown to Abu Dhabi for the spectacle. The mounted regiment of the Household Cavalry provides escorts for state and royal events.

Stronger economic links between the UAE and Britain were partly forged during a state visit more than a decade ago. The then UAE president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, visited in spring 2013 with a delegation including Sheikh Mansour and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chairman of Manchester City.

Thousands of people lined the streets for a carriage procession, with the UAE national flags and Union flags lining the route. Sheikh Mansour rode through Windsor with the Duke of Edinburgh in the Australian state coach, behind the Queen and the UAE president.

At the state lunch that followed, the Queen praised the breadth of Emirati investment in Britain, “and, of course, Manchester City”. The delegation visited Downing Street the next day, where the then prime minister David Cameron spoke of the “lasting and strategic importance to Britain of our relationship with the UAE”.

There is a long-standing practice of the monarch approving honorary awards to foreign nationals to mark a state visit, with an exchange of hon-

ours between two countries. When honours are not exchanged it is gen-

erally because that country usually

does not give or accept honours.

Thirteen members of the UAE delegation were given awards on the recommendation of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO): Sheikh Mansour was made a KBE and Al Mubarak a CBE.

The state visit was then followed by billions of pounds of investments by the UAE across Britain, including in renewable energy, property and education.

One of the biggest UAE investors in Britain has been the state-owned renewable energy firm Masdar. The firm was launched in 2006 by Mubadala, a UAE sovereign investment firm, which had a 33% stake in Masdar and is headed by Al Mubarak.

Masdar has a 49% holding in a North Sea offshore wind farm project known as Dogger Bank South. Under the £11bn project, annual fees for development rights of £247.6m are paid to the Crown Estate, which owns the seabed around England. Masdar would be expected to pay about half of these fees as a joint stakeholder in the venture.

The offshore wind fees have generated large profits for the Crown Estate, which are passed to the Treasury and also serve as a benchmark for calculating the Sovereign Grant, which funds the official duties of the monarch.

In addition to large investments in energy infrastructure, UK and UAE officials have held talks about billions of pounds of deals involving the defence sector.

In May John Healey, then defence secretary, met UAE defence minister Mohamed bin Mubarak bin Fadhel Al Mazrouei in London. The Ministry of Defence said at the time that the meeting was to “improve future industrial collaboration and capability development”.

"I know from my own sources that the UAE is looking to invest in defence in the UK," said Andreas Krieg, a political risk analyst at King's College London. "I am sure they will now say they have to reconsider."

Krieg said that in recent years there have been strains in diplomatic relations between the two countries over claims that the UAE had funded paramilitaries in Sudan. The UAE denies supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group.

In 2024 UAE officials were reported to have cancelled ministerial meetings with the UK after their country was accused of supporting the RSF at a UK-sponsored UN meeting. More recently, political relations between the two countries have improved.

Krieg said: “There will now be more pressure on the bilateral relationship at a time when I think the British government thought it had turned a page.”

The FCDO, the UK embassy of the UAE and Manchester City football club have all been contacted for comment.

An independent commission found the club had disguised more than £830m of funding from the Abu Dhabi United Group as sponsorship income.

There is no suggestion of personal wrongdoing by Sheikh Mansour and none of the charges are against him personally. The club denies all charges and is appealing.

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Billions invested across the UK

The UAE has invested tens of billions of pounds into the UK over the past two decades, including £30bn since 2021 overseen by the sovereign wealth fund Mubadala headed by Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak.

Manchester City

The club was bought by

Sheikh Mansour's Abu

Dhabi United Group in

September 2008 in a

£200m deal. Mansour's

group of companies have

since invested in a £1bn

regeneration project

in Manchester and an

entertainment district next to the Etihad Stadium.

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Mubadala

The sovereign fund has a range of investments across the UK. It has funded broadband infrastructure provider CityFibre with at least £800m. It is also the majority owner of the Witherslack Group, one of the UK's biggest providers of specialist education.

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DP World

P&O Ferries is owned by Dubai's ruling family. It owns and operates the container ports at Southampton and

London Gateway where it is investing £1bn to increase capacity.

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Masdar

The UAE-owned renewable energy company has investments in the UK, including the £11bn Dogger Bank South and £4bn East Anglia Three wind farm projects in the North Sea.

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Aldar Properties

The publicly listed real estate company is backed by the UAE government, with Mubadala a major shareholder. In 2023, it completed a £230m

acquisition of the UK developer London Square, its first expansion outside the Middle East. It offers homes for sale across London.

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Diafa

The Abu Dhabi hospitality brand is backed by Abu Dhabi deputy ruler Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Diafa bought a majority stake in Richard Caring's hospitality empire for £1.4bn earlier this year. The portfolio includes the Ivy restaurant chain and the London private members' club Annabel's.

From Russia with interference: Burnham first PM to confirm Kremlin role in Brexit

The prime minister has revealed he asked UK authorities about Moscow's involvement in the referendum after entering No 10, writes Catherine Neilan

Andy Burnham has said UK authorities are “clear” that there was Russian interference in the Brexit vote: this is the first time a prime minister has confirmed Kremlin involvement in the 2016 referendum.

The prime minister, who is embarking on efforts to redraw the UK's relationship with the European Union, said he “asked the question” when he entered Downing Street this summer and was given “the clear answer that, yes, there was”.

Burnham, speaking on The Rest Is Politics podcast, to be released on Monday, opens up the possibility of greater government transparency over allegations of Russian interference, after many years in which Downing Street has declined to confirm what UK authorities knew about the part the Kremlin might have played in 2016.

The Observer was the first to reveal concerns arising from a series of meetings between Russian officials and senior figures at the Leave.EU campaign, including mega donor Arron Banks. It is not suggested Banks or any other Leave.EU figure was engaged in wrongdoing.

Separately, there have been widespread allegations that Russian government agencies used troll factories and fake internet accounts to manipulate social media and influence British public opinion in favour of leaving the EU before the referendum.

Burnham, who last week met the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, in Berlin, said the pair discussed the growing risks posed by hostile states, and that his counterpart “was saying to me that the AfD [Alternative für Deutschland] are clearly linked to Russia – funded, I believe”.

The Obs

Top Brexit funder 'had multiple meetings with Russian officials'

Vladimir Putin on board a Russian navy guided missile cruiser earlier this year. There have been widespread allegations that Russian government agencies used trolls to influence the 2016 Brexit referendum. Gavriil Grigorov/AFP via Getty Images

Leave.EU chief met key embassy staff Link would

On the podcast, Burnham added: "There is certainly misinformation, disinformation that is emanating from Russia into German politics... But I asked the question coming to Downing Street: was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia? And I've had the clear answer that yes, there was. "I mean, these things are important now to put clearly on the record and help voters

\- Two meetings in the week Leave. EU launched its official campaign.

• An introduction to a Russian businessman, by the Russian ambassa-

in Germany and France understand that some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia."

He said the country had been “too much on the back foot”, which meant voters had not been “informed... sufficiently about the extent to which people are seeking to disrupt the political process from overseas”.

Speaking at the UN a fortnight ago, Burnham touched on Russian interference in UK democracy without discussing the Brexit vote. He said: "We have evidence that they tried to interfere with the 2019 general election. We also know that they have tried to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events."

The 2020 Russia report, written by parliament's intelligence and security committee (ISC) and heavily redacted before publication, said it was una-

Vote Leave campaigners vow to regroup and fight again

Catherine Neilan

Whitehall editor

Andy Burnham's reopening of the Europe debate has galvanised the team behind Brexit, who are vowing to fight any attempts to overturn the referendum result.

The prime minister's announcement that he would seek a new relationship with Europe sent ripples through the old Vote Leave team.

When the news started spreading through semi-dormant WhatsApp groups, “the mood was not doom and gloom, not ‘how can we get the band back together?’,” said one former campaigner. “It was ‘this guy’s crazy – has he not watched it destroy everyone over the last 10 years?’”

Others were less sanguine. One wrote: "There were always players on the pitch, but since 2019 there hasn't been anyone fighting on behalf of people more sceptical of EU membership. No one has really been pushing back on this stuff – now they will be."

Work is now under way to put together a new cross-party group in Parliament, akin to the exploratory committee, or “excom”, formed after the 2015 election, which ultimately led to the Vote Leave campaign.

Conservative MP and former Vote Leave director Bernard Jenkin is reaching out to parliamentary colleagues to make a plan. Some involved are expected to speak at a debate tomorrow regarding a petition to “rejoin the EU as soon as possible to increase growth in the UK”, which has received more than 110,000 votes.

“Andy Burnham is mad to do all this rejoin stuff,” Jenkin said. “Have no doubt: our campaign would win again, because polls show that if voters are asked about giving back control, or paying money to the EU budget again, rejoining is a non-starter."

Old Vote Leave campaigners say they will fight any suggestion that the UK could rejoin the trading bloc, which many believe would have to be put to a referendum. "There would be riots on the streets if he does it without a referendum," said one.

Already the debate is playing out in public, with Brexiteers suggesting the EU might make joining the Euro a condition of return. They stress the cost of being a full member, which

'Andy Burnham is mad to do all this rejoin stuff'

Bernard Jenkin, Conservative MP some estimates put as high as £30bn a year. They argue that EU economic growth has been sluggish and the political environment has gone from one typified by centrist Angela Merkel to the ADF's Alice Weidel.

But the prospect of reuniting the Vote Leave gang faces hurdles. Several players are now running their own public affairs businesses, while many MPs involved have left parliament. Disagreements have not died down.

"There is no place for Dominic Cummings," said one former member. "And if it's Nigel vs Burnham we lose. Vote Leave masterminded a bringing together of minds without Farage and Aaron Banks because they toxified the debate – the only reason we won is because it wasn't them."

Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron at Downing Street last month. Getty

'A lot more French': so what kind of EU would Britain be rejoining?

ble to reach a conclusion because: "We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference."

The ISC's request for a further assessment to be carried out, with an “unclassified summary” to be made public, was rejected by the Boris Johnson-led government of the time.

The 2016 referendum was outside the scope of Philip Rycroft's recent review of foreign financial influence and interference, although the senior civil servant noted that the UK was “a target of long-term strategic foreign interference and espionage from elements of the Russian, Chinese and Iranian states”.

In 2018, The Observer revealed that leaders of Leave.EU held several meetings with high-ranking Russian officials between November 2015 and 2017, and made a trip to Moscow in February 2016.

Banks has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign.

Later in 2018, the then Sunday Times journalist Isabel Oakeshott suggested the Kremlin might have “literally struck gold” in forging a relationship with Banks – who became the biggest single donor to Brexit – and fellow Leave.EU campaigner Andy Wigmore. “My analysis is that Banks and Wigmore were shamelessly used by the Russians,” she added.

Banks was investigated by the Electoral Commission, which referred the matter to the National Crime Agency (NCA). Questioned over the “true source” of £8m loaned to the Leave.EU campaign, Banks told the BBC: “There was no Russian money and no interference of any type. I want to be absolutely clear about that. The money came from Rock Services, which was a UK limited company.”

The NCA subsequently found “no evidence” of criminal offences. Banks threatened to take the Electoral Commission to court for defamation in October 2019, before the two sides settled the following year.

A Downing Street spokesperson declined to comment on the nature of the prime minister's briefing but said: "National security is the first duty of any government – we are focused on ensuring our citizens and our institutions are protected from foreign powers and their proxies seeking to threaten lives and undermine our democratic values."

Officials have been flirting with Bre-entry, but the country may find Brussels now favours deeper integration. Karl Mathiesen reports

Andy Burnham may have opened the door to rejoining the European Union, but it's not clear the UK really understands what that looks like.

The prime minister and other British officials were in Berlin and Strasbourg last week, pushing the reset message and receiving a warm welcome from European officials. David McAllister, a senior German member of the European parliament and chair of its foreign affairs committee, said: “I don’t think many people realise how much the British are still missed in Brussels.”

Yet even the most committed Remainer would have to concede that the EU the country voted to leave 10 years ago no longer exists.

"The fundamental identity, the DNA, the nature of the EU, over the last 10 years has changed," said Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group consultancy. "I don't think that's particularly well understood."

So how has Europe changed since Brexit, and what does that mean for the nascent effort to get back in?

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Far-right rising

At the time of the 2016 referendum, the number of hard-right members of the European parliament stood at about 80. Today it is 196. They enjoy increasing sway over legislation. In several countries, traditionally Eurosceptic parties are now part of the governing coalition. By the time Burnham resolves his own position on the EU and puts it to a general election, France may be years into a Marine Le Pen presidency.

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United in defence

UK officials were vigorous opponents of formal EU defence cooperation. In their absence, and in response to Russia's war in Ukraine, the EU is moving rapidly towards what McAllister has called “a fully fledged European defence union”.

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The French correction

Protectionism, industrial policy and common debt thrown at shared problems are now central to the EU's approach. "These are things that UK governments of both persuasions – Tory and Labour – in the past have opposed," said Rahman.

The mood in Brussels has shifted decidedly in favour of French president Emmanuel Macron's vision of “strategic autonomy”. In other words, Rahman said, “the EU has become a lot more French”.

For example, said MEP Sandro Gozi, the issuance of tens of billions in EU bonds to build the Covid recovery was “absolutely a sign of a deeper integration”.

The trust is gone

There is a deep unease about the flakiness of the British commitment. "What the European Union would expect is a sincere interest. And one thing is also clear: nobody wants to experience anything like a second Brexit," said

McAllister. "You left us, not the other way around."

An issue such as entering the euro may become a shibboleth; symbolic for overcoming broken faith.

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Deindustrialisation

Last year almost 200,000 German businesses closed down, the highest number since the financial crisis. Brussels, panicked, is going all out to develop industrial policy that pushes companies to buy European and subsidise strategic industries.

It's an issue over which Britain will find common cause. "That is not that far from the priorities of your current prime minister," Gozi said.

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China shock 2.0

In the face of this, the EU has targeted key Chinese industries, such as electric vehicles, for defensive trade measures.

"The UK government is in a very different place on China. They talk with a tough voice, but are absolutely open for business," said Rahman. The British are unlikely to find many in Brussels happy with a more freewheeling approach.

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Economic balance shift

The decline of the traditional powerhouses has coincided with the rise of post-Soviet countries. Poland, for example, is now the EU's sixth-largest economy. Poles have also closed the gap with British people: the country's GDP per capita, when adjusted for purchasing power, is around $85\%$ of the UK's.

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Expanding east

Ukraine, Moldova, Montenegro and Albania are all pushing to join the bloc by the end of the decade, expanding it to 31 countries. This comes with consequences. For example, Ukraine's vast wheatfields would make it eligible for a huge share of the EU's biggest subsidy programme, the Common

Agricultural Policy. Based on

the current system Ukraine would displace France as the largest recipient of farming cash, receiving €96.5bn over a seven-year cycle.

A walled continent In 2014, the EU had 315km of border fences.

By 2022, that had surged to

By 2022, that had surged to more than 2,000km. Even within the Schengen zone, some countries now have border checks. The anti-immigration critique of Brexit now has an echo at the heart of the EU.

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Priority mismatch

The European capital's gossipy morning newsletters have almost completely ignored the pivot by Andy Burnham. "It's far from our daily realities," said one EU official.

A summit in November between Burnham and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen may focus minds in Brussels.

'A stronger UK role in Europe makes us all stronger,' says Estonian PM

Estonia's prime minister Kristen Michal on how the bloc has changed in 10 years – and what Britain could bring to the table

Would the UK be welcomed back in the EU, and what would its return bring to the bloc?

From an Estonian perspective, the UK would be very welcome back in the European Union. I haven't met Andy Burnham yet. But I always said to Keir Starmer that we miss having the Brits at the table. I am glad Andy Burnham is considering different options for closer cooperation, although ultimately this is a choice only the British people can make.

Estonia and the UK have always been close allies. The UK plays an important role in supporting the security and stability of our region. Before Brexit, we were often like-minded on issues such as a strong transatlantic relationship, Nato and European security, free trade, digitalisation and a firm policy towards Russia. The UK also brought significant military and diplomatic weight to the EU. A stronger UK role in Europe makes us all stronger.

In the meantime, we should make EU–UK co-operation as close as possible. We already work on security and defence, including the defence industry, sanctions, hybrid and cyber threats, military mobil-

ity, maritime security. Estonia also supports flexible solutions if the UK seeks to join EU defence programmes such as Safe (Security Action for Europe). We want close trade relations with the UK and pragmatic solutions on issues such as youth mobility as well.

How has the EU changed in the 10 years we have been away? The EU today is much more focused on defence, security, resilience and geopolitics than it was before the Brexit referendum, largely because of Russia's full-scale aggres-

sion against Ukraine. The EU has also faced the Covid-19 pandemic, energy and migration crises, and growing challenges to its competitiveness. One thing has become especially clear: the EU needs its friends close. The UK is one of them.

Will the issue be discussed at the EU council meeting next week?

The UK rejoining the EU is not on the agenda. But closer EU-UK co-operation is already happening, and the next UK–EU summit will be another opportunity to take it further. Estonia would welcome that.

Gary Gilmore's execution chair, left, seen through one of the gun portals used; above, a boy at a 1936 execution in Kentucky. FPG/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive

In August 1936, outrage at Rainey Bethea's execution, right, which drew a crowd of 15,000, made it the last public hanging in the US. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

If the livestreamed public execution goes ahead, it will degrade everyone involved

The killing of Nadal Hasan by a firing squad, which is due to be broadcast live, will be almost impossible for anyone who uses social media to avoid. That is exactly what the macho US defence secretary Pete Hegseth wants, Giles Whittell writes

The ritual of execution by firing squad may be different on a military base, but this is how it works on a civilian death row: marksmen – usually five of them – are recruited from local law enforcement. One is given a blank, the rest live rounds. On his last evening, the prisoner is offered a meal of his choice.

A few minutes before midnight, he is stripped, searched and strapped to a steel chair flanked by sandbags. A hood is placed over his head. A coin-sized white Velcro patch is placed on his prison suit over his heart. Witnesses are invited into an adjacent room with a view through three large windows of the execution chamber. The marksmen, using old Winchester rifles, aim at the patch through horizontal firing ports in a wall, at a range of about 10 paces. After a countdown, they fire.

Most witnesses are state officials and relatives of the prisoner's victim or victims. A few are chosen from the press by ballot. I was never one of them, but I covered Utah's last

two firing squad executions from a prison service basketball court across the freeway from death row. There, we depended on details relayed by those who saw it all.

The first execution, in 1996, was of John Albert Taylor, a convicted child killer, who ate pizza at about 5pm and later cried a little with a Catholic priest. At 12.01am he uttered his last words: "As the poem was written: 'Remember me, but let me go.'" One witness said his chest heaved and his left fist clenched and unclenched as he died.

The second, in 2010, was of Ronnie Lee Gardner, convicted of two murders and executed after a day spent watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy and drinking Coke and Mountain Dew. He had no final words or meal that day, but had eaten steak, lobster tail, ice cream and apple pie three days before.

The next US execution by firing squad, barring appeals, will be of former army major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 fellow service personnel in 2009 at Ford Hood, Texas. If the secretary of defence,

Pete Hegseth, has his way, it will be livestreamed – and the US will never be the same again. It will be the country that faced up to the reality of its own laws, or gave in to its basest instincts, depending on your view. For believers in social progress, it will share a badge of dishonour with Iran and North Korea, and almost nowhere else – at least in 2026.

In the Rome of 80BC, and the London of 1649, Hegseth would have had more company. Charles I's regicides understood perfectly the power of a public execution to draw a crowd. The Jacobins industrialised execution as a tool of mass intimidation. This century's worst thugs have not learned much from the French Enlightenment, but they know how to spread fear.

---

Why kill him in public, on the web? Hegseth's machismo must be part of it

Amnesty International has documented hundreds of public executions in Iran in the past two years, including those of two anti-regime protesters hanged in a square in Isfahan in July. In 2013, Donald Trump's “friend” Kim Jong-un had his uncle executed in public, reportedly with an anti-aircraft gun.

What is different and confounding about Hegseth's announcement is that he has no real internal enemies to scare. Hasan appears to have been radicalised by the Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki but there have been no comparable attacks on American military personnel in the US for 17 years.

So why kill him in public, live on the web? Hegseth's extreme machismo must be part of it. This is the ex-army major and former Fox News host with a Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest, who last year ordered about 800 generals and admirals back to the headquarters of the US Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, from their far-flung bases to humiliate the most senior among them for trying to boost diversity in the US armed forces and make the Pentagon a better employer.

Hegseth was almost panting with excitement last week when reminding an alt-right podcaster on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln that the American military had not executed anyone by firing squad since the Second World War. "I kinda like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win," he said, even though the US has failed to win the Iran War, from which the aircraft carrier was returning with 5,000 exhausted crew.

Hegseth is presumably not impervious to American culture, and executions have a part in it. Norman Mailer documented Utah's first firing squad execution – that of Gary Gilmour in 1977 – after the supreme court reinstated the death penalty – in his true crime novel The Executioner's Song. The anti-

Left: Rainey Bethea, 26, who was publicly hanged for the murder of a 70-year-old white woman.

Joseph Costa/NY Daily News/Getty Images

death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean, whose 1993 book Dead Man Walking inspired the 1995 film of the same name, sent a note to Taylor on his last evening alive, asking him to let her plead for clemency on his behalf. He declined the offer.

If the livestream goes ahead, Hasan's will be almost impossible for anyone on social media not to see; a show designed to degrade everyone involved, presented to the world by its most powerful army at the confluence of tech, populism and performative virility. Hegseth wants Hasan to die on Facebook.

When Taylor was executed in 1996, 150 reporters descended on Bluffdale in Utah from all over the world. We were there because it was so hard to believe it was happening that we had to be sure it really was. Less than eight hours after Taylor was pronounced dead, Sheryl Allan, a Republican legislator, tabled a state law to ban firing squads in her state. It passed, but allowed them for those who had already chosen the bullet over lethal injection. Gardner was among them.

During his execution, we could not hear the shots but were told three bullets hit the target and the fourth was close. A witness said Gardner seemed to be fighting death even after being shot.

The prison has since been razed, but Utah's death row lives on. The firing squad is still available – as back-up, should the lethal injection prove impractical.

I'm not going to be watching: Vance casts doubt over livestream

Decision to allow millions to witness a man's death prompts widespread revulsion

Hugh Tomlinson

US correspondent

At 1pm local time on 3 December, Nidal Hasan, a former US army psychiatrist, will be taken into the death chamber at Fort Hood military base in Texas to face execution by firing squad.

Hasan's final moments will be observed by relatives, military and law enforcement officers, and members of the press. Also watching will be a potential audience of millions online, after US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth announced that the execution will be live-streamed.

“We’ll make sure people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said last week.

But doubts have already been raised over whether the live-streamed execution will go ahead. Trump confirmed he had approved the online feed, but said he has yet to “make a determination” on whether to allow it.

Meanwhile, some in the White House have voiced unease. Vice-president JD Vance cast doubt on whether the event is “actually going to happen” and said if it was, he’s “not going to be watching it”.

The location and timing of the execution were chosen to coincide with the moment Hasan opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 and wounding 32. The shooting was the deadliest ever on an American base.

Hegseth, who has staged a series of publicity stunts during his turbulent stewardship of the Pentagon, said the symbolism was a “no-brainer”.

He added: “We’re going to do it at 1 o’clock, and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that.”

Asked if Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth added: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

Hegseth's decision has prompted sweeping condemnation at home and abroad. The last state-sanctioned public execution in the US was in 1936, when thousands watched the hanging of a Black man convicted of raping a white woman. The move to revive the practice has drawn comparisons with Islamist dictatorships such as Iran and Afghanistan, and with the beheading videos of terrorist groups such as Isis.

Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, said the proposal was “barbaric” and “beneath our dignity as a country”. The UN high commission for human rights said that a public execution would “breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.

Some of Hasan's victims have also raised concerns. Alonzo Lunsford, a former US army sergeant who was shot seven times by Hasan, said he was determined to attend the execution but opposed a live broadcast “like a pay-per-view, WWE-type event”.

“I believe the punishment fits the crime... Lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging – to me, that’s doing him a favour,” he said. “I want that dude to look at me eye to eye. For him to know: ‘You failed. I am no longer your victim. I’m a survivor.’”

But Lunsford said children would inevitably watch, with clips being posted on social media within seconds. "We have to set the example," he said. "I don't want no kids to see it."

Hegseth's announcement came only days after a botched execution in Tennessee revived debate about the death penalty in the US. Christa Pike, a 50-year-old woman sentenced to death for a murder in 1995, survived two doses of a lethal injection and was returned to prison yesterday, her life in legal limbo.

Support for capital punishment in the US remains steady. A Pew Research Center survey in July found that two-thirds of Americans favour the death penalty for murderers,

Nidal Hasan is due to be executed by firing squad on 3 December.

with 84% of Republicans supporting it compared with 51% of Democrats.

A majority (73%) admit there is a risk that an innocent person will be put to death and 59% believe that the threat of execution is not a deterrent.

Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the charity Reprieve, said the US regularly offers “a magnificent illustration of how barbaric the death penalty is”.

He added: “But these people have done it twice in a week and a half with Christa Pike and now this.”

Stafford Smith argued that a live-streamed execution would inspire copycat killings. Hasan, who is now disabled, has said he carried out the attack to wage jihad on the US as revenge for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he had hoped to die and become a martyr.

“Hasan is considered a hero by some,” said Stafford Smith. “If we put him in front of a firing squad on television in his wheelchair, I can guarantee you there are going to be Americans who end up in the same situation, being shot by some lunatic.”

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A pile of unsorted secondhand clothes in Taiwan, where about a third of discarded textile is incinerated.

Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

Jeevan Vasagar's Climate Observer

The Observer's climate editor explains what matters and what's working as humanity faces its biggest challenge

The Vinted paradox: why our secondhand clothes craze is becoming less than sustainable

Resale platforms are

big business, but

experts warn our desire

for pre-loved stuff may

be fuelling the same

excessive shopping

they should curb

Jeevan Vasagar

Climate editor

Like many users of peer-to-peer clothing platforms, Briony Hockley admits that scrolling through images of secondhand apparel has an addictive quality. Increasingly, she worries this addiction is fuelling the overconsumption it was meant to curb.

Although Hockley, 29, a civil servant from Essex, was first drawn to platforms such as Vinted and Depop by their affordability, the promise of more sustainable fashion was “maybe 20%” of the appeal. “It does make me feel better that it’s secondhand and not going to landfill,” she said.

She has since become hooked by an algorithm tailored to her tastes and a constantly refreshed offer of clothes, adding: "You do get into the habit of checking all the time."

Payments for the clothes she sells on Vinted are held in the app rather than transferred straight into her bank account, creating the illusion of “free money” to spend on more clothing. “I get into phases of impulse buying,” Hockley said. “I have convinced myself that I’m being more sustainable but it is still overconsumption.”

Reselling platforms have boomed in recent years. Vinted, founded in Lithuania in 2008, was valued at €8bn (£6.9bn) in April and last year generated worldwide revenues of more than €1bn. The platform launched in Australia this year and is now expanding in the US. Depop had revenue of £141m last year, according to its annual report.

The fashion industry's greenhouse gas emissions come primarily from extracting and processing raw materials and from producing new clothes, so extending the life of existing clothes has the power to transform the industry's impact on the planet. But there is little evidence that the popularity of fashion resellers is curbing the desire to buy new.

Mark Sumner, head of the textiles programme at environmental charity Wrap, said: "What we have seen is that people who are buying a secondhand T-shirt, rather than being satisfied with that, are still [also] buying a new T-shirt." Sumner suggests it takes a higher number of secondhand purchases to scratch the fashion itch compared with buying new: "If they buy four or five [secondhand], it ultimately displaces one new T-shirt."

Hockley used to hunt for bargains at charity shops instead of online, but she feels the quality of the clothing there has declined. Platforms such as Vinted are now skimming off the best of secondhand fashion, experts say, leaving charities to sift the dregs.

About 1.5m tonnes of textile waste is generated in the UK every year. Nearly half goes into general waste, where it is burned for energy or buried in landfill. Traditionally, charities have saved many of the remaining items and sold them back to the public.

“Charities are having to work harder to find valuable products, and there’s more leftover stuff that has no value,” Sumner said, adding that the closure of charity shops across the country and the sector’s shrinking capacity to deal with surplus textiles means that more clothing is likely to be fly-tipped or dumped.

Sustainable fashion advocates suggest customers have grown so accustomed to the instant gratification of fast fashion that these habits have been transferred to reselling sites.

Holly Watkins, 44, began selling secondhand clothes on market stalls in 1995, shifted to eBay for convenience, but has now returned to offline retail, with two stores in north London. Watkins said her focus was on building a community experience around buying second-hand clothes.

“Anything encouraging wider society to buy and sell secondhand is a good thing, but I think people make a better decision in real life,” Watkins said. “In the shop, it’s a much better process. I can ask somebody, "What will you style it with?"

Although clothes production has soared globally, durability has dropped. The filters on reselling platforms – from “new with tags” to “satisfactory” – tends to deprioritise clothes needing repairs. “Nobody is going to buy something on Vinted that is shown as broken,” said Orsola de Castro, a fashion designer and author. “But repair is the only thing that can slow down mass consumption.”

She suggested peer-to-peer platforms could play a part in connecting consumers to people with the special-

'I've convinced myself that I'm being more sustainable, but it's still overconsumption' Briony Hockley, Vinted fan

ist skills to repair apparel and shoes, but that this would also require a shift in the public's mindset.

“Mending died because of the advent of fast fashion” she said. “You have to be willing to spend money to get back something that’s better than it was – a visible mend, or fit to size. It’s almost couture, bespoke.”

Others in the industry point out that many brands already partner with the online repair site Sojo and run their own reselling platforms, but face only modest levels of customer engagement.

An executive at a midsized British fashion brand, who requested anonymity, said: "What it comes back to is: does our customer care? And truthfully the answer is no. When you look at actual consumers, whenever we do surveys, sustainability is always number three on the priority list. We don't use virgin materials [clothing that has not been previously used or recycled]. But recycled polyester continues to be our best-selling product."

A spokesperson for Depop said the platform recognised the concerns about overconsumption and had measured how far purchases on its site replaced new ones. They added: “Our research shows most buyers are prepared to wait for the right find, or go without, rather than buy new.”

Depop said more than three in five purchases on its platform prevent the purchase of a new item elsewhere. Vinted says 76% of purchases on its platform replaced new buys last year.

Zack Polanksi and other candidates in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection listen to Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali's victory speech.

Zack Polanksi campaigning last week for the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, which he lost. He now faces calls to resign as party leader. Vuk Valcic/Zuma Press, Avalon

'Existential threat': how the anti-Zionist motion left the Greens reeling

Poll shows support for party has plunged after it was accused of endorsing antisemitism and Zack Polanski lost a crucial byelection. By Rachel Sylvester

Support for the Green party is plummeting after it lost the crucial Holborn byelection and faces accusations of antisemitism. The latest

Opinium poll for The Observer puts the Greens on their lowest approval level since Zack Polanski became leader last year.

The party's approval rating has dropped by nine percentage points, down from $16\%$ in May. The share of young people – those aged from 18 to 34 – planning to vote Green has halved over the past five months, from $28\%$ at the time of the local elections in May to $14\%$ now.

Polanski's personal approval rating has plunged by seven points, making him the most unpopular of the party leaders. Only $17\%$ of voters think he is doing a good job and

just 14% believe he represents what most people think. According to the poll, 42% believe the Greens have a problem with antisemitism.

The Green leader is under growing pressure over his failure to prevent his party conference adopting a policy stating that “Zionism is racism”. The motion, which was approved by members by 1,022 votes to 813, also called for a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine”.

Although Polanski has since clarified that he would have voted against the motion, he did not make his views clear in advance and missed the debate to campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection. On Thursday, he was beaten into second place by Sagal Abdi-Wali, the Labour candidate in Keir Starmer's former London seat.

Asked by the BBC on Friday, the Green leader refused to say whether he believed Israel has a right to exist.

The conference vote last weekend has triggered turmoil among the Greens. Four of the party's five MPs are at odds with members and some senior figures have called for Polanski to resign. Insiders suggest thousands of members have quit the party in protest at the motion. One local party has seen a two-point drop in membership since last Sunday. If this were replicated across the country, it would mean 4,400 people had resigned.

Ellie Chowns, the Green MP for North Herefordshire – who opposed the motion – said constituency members had emailed her saying they couldn't stay in the party. "My estimate would be that many more people have left the party than voted for the motion," she said.

“Zack has been an effective communicator in reaching out to new audiences for the Green party, so I’m not calling for him to resign, but I do think that united leadership across the party is now needed to learn the lessons from this and

address our governance structures and policy-making processes, which are not fit for purpose."

The former Green leader, Caroline Lucas, said the party urgently needs to review its internal rules to make them “more robust and less open to entryism” by hardliners.

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“It cannot be right that 0.5% of the membership – 1,022 people, some of whom were encouraged to join the party simply to push this motion through – can set such a major policy change on behalf of so many others,” she told The Observer. “We need to find ways to make our structures more resilient and, frankly, more democratic.”

She called for Lubna Speitan, the party member behind the motion, to be suspended pending an investigation. Speitan, who was a Labour party member under Jeremy Corbyn and then joined his leftwing Your Party, was described in US court documents in 2015 as a “close friend” of a man later jailed for supporting Al-Qaeda.

In a post on Instagram, Speitan said: “I reject all defamatory and nonsense claims made about me.”

Lucas said: “I don’t know how much truth there is in the things that have been said, but I think it’s clearly very worrying and that action needs to be taken without prejudging what the outcome of an investigation would be.”

She said it was a mistake for Polanski not to be at the conference last Sunday to “show some leadership” on the motion. “I have worked on the Palestinian cause for years,” she said. “I have visited the West Bank three times. I have been to Gaza. I absolutely think the actions of this Israeli government

are racist; I think what it's doing in Gaza amounts to a genocide. But I also say that a motion which effectively appears to deny the right of Israel to exist is crossing a very significant red line."

Another senior Green described the fallout from the conference vote as an “existential threat”. “We were just on the precipice of enacting real change and getting real power. Our members have now given any other party a way of saying: ‘We’re not going to work with the Greens because of this.’ If you look at successful green parties across the world, they are always big tent parties. We have narrowed our tent. The Green party looks extreme.”

Under party rules, motions supported by members become official policy but are not necessarily included in the next election manifesto. The Campaign Against Antisemitism has referred the policy adopted last weekend by the Greens to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), claiming it had “real potential to embolden expressions of antisemitism”.

Andy Burnham has called on Polanski to reverse the policy, describing the vote in favour of it as a “completely wrong decision, a terrible judgment on the part of the Green party of England and Wales”.

Vivien Lichtenstein, the chair of Jewish Greens, said she was “very unhappy” that Polanski had not argued or voted against the motion. “I think he should resign as leader because he needs to take responsibility for not putting forward his position properly.”

Andrée Frieze, a former Green party councillor, resigned on Monday after 14 years in the party. “I cannot stay in a party with a policy that is antisemitic,” she said. “I would feel ashamed to walk into my synagogue. A small, very organised minority of people have taken over the party. They have infiltrated party positions and they have abused the policy process to get things through.

"The tail is wagging the dog. There are extreme Islamists in the party and also radical leftwingers who have decided the Green party is to be a vehicle for them to push their extreme anti-Zionist agenda."

Ian Austin, a former Labour minister who is now a non-affiliated peer, said the Green party had been taken over by some of the same leftwingers who joined Labour under Corbyn. “They’re zealots, they’re extremists and they’re obsessed,” he said. “They’ve all moved en masse and, having tried to destroy the Labour party, they now want to destroy the Greens. The Greens are going to find out the same hard truth: that, in the end, you win elections by being reasonable and pleasant and in the centre ground. The British people don’t vote for extremists.”

Adam Langleben, the director of the centre-left thinktank Progress, helped compile the EHRC complaint about antisemitism in the Labour party when Corbyn was leader. In 2023, he and Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, wrote to Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, then Green co-leaders, warning that their party was “in danger of providing a refuge for both the ideas of leftwing antisemitism and the individuals involved in the bastardisation of progressive values”. They received no response.

Langleben said: "You've got the Gen Z Corbynistas, who joined the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn as young, idealistic leftwingers and have moved over to the Greens. But alongside them, you've got the more hardcore Trotskyites, Marxists of all different varieties, who generally are

State of the parties

If there was a general election tomorrow, who would you vote for?

Source: Opinium interviewed 2,050 UK adults from 7 to 9 October 2026

much older and whiter.

“Andy Burnham has to rule out going into any kind of partnership. There’s also going to be a question now... as to whether or not Labour councils can be in coalition agreements with the Greens.”

A spokesperson said: “The Green party is proud of its member-led democracy, which enables members to participate in developing policy, contribute to working groups and stand for elected positions within the party. Members are entitled to organise and advocate for policies they believe in, provided they do so in accordance with our rules and values. We expect all members to uphold those standards, and any suggestion of activity which does not align with our values and code of conduct is deeply concerning.

"As the party grows, we recognise the importance of keeping our democratic processes under review to ensure they remain accessible, inclusive, robust and effective."

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Davey faces Lib Dem mutiny over leadership after two resignations

Catherine Neilan

Whitehall editor

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, is preparing for a potential mutiny after the resignation of two frontbench MPs last week.

Charlie Maynard, a Treasury spokesman, and Alison Bennett, the party's spokesperson on care, both resigned and are said to be part of a "small group" of Liberal Democrat MPs who are unhappy with Davey's leadership.

On Tuesday the party will gather for its first parliamentary meeting since the annual conference last month, with a group of MPs threatening to launch a no-confidence motion in their leader of six years amid what one described as a “febrile” environment.

Davey led the party to its best-ever result in 2024, with 72 MPs, but some within the Liberal Democrats believe that support has plateaued, prompting concerns that the next election could result in significant losses.

Over recent months, there have been growing complaints about Davey's inability to cut through to voters, prompting the leader to appoint a new chief of staff and his first head of communications and strategy.

However, criticism has gone further in the past fortnight, following Davey's defence of the triple lock – the pensions policy brought in by the coalition government in which he was a minister. MPs including Tom Gordon and Vikki Slade are among those arguing that the policy puts off potential millennial voters.

Others have criticised Davey's response to Andy Burnham's conference pledge on social care, which the Lib Dem leader dismissed as “a vibe”. MPs said that Davey, himself a carer who has often made passionate commitments to tackling the issue, had felt “the rug pulled” by Burnham announcing a unilateral approach, having previously talked up the need for cross-party consensus.

Since Maynard's resignation, more than a dozen Liberal Democrat MPs have posted their support for Davey on social media.

Tim Farron, the party's former leader, said: “To think we're helped by this kind of rubbish, you'd need to be smoking the kind of stuff even we aren't in favour of legalising.”

Daisy Cooper, the party's deputy leader, added: “We Lib Dems are the last line of defence against a Reform UK government.”

Half of the party's MPs would have to support a no-confidence motion in order for it to pass. One MP said it would be “challenging” for Davey, but that he expected the leader to survive. “I have no feeling that it’s coordinated or particularly planned,” he said.

One Lib Dem source said the leader was “extremely buoyed” by the public support he had received, and that there was “a real sense of fury at the small group of MPs who are trying to divide the party”.

Badenoch's £10bn ‘Britannia Shield’ defence system shot down by military experts

The Tory leader's plan to protect the UK has immediately come under fire over its lack of operative detail, potential effectiveness and cost, reports Xavier Greenwood

Kemi Badenoch last week pledged £10bn investment over 10 years to build an integrated defence system to protect the UK from missiles and drones. But the plan, nicknamed “Britannia Shield”, was unveiled with none of the precision of the guided missiles it is meant to fend off.

“You’ve got to speak to a defence expert about exactly how it works,” the Conservative leader conceded in an interview with LBC, in which she appeared unsure about key details of the proposal.

Britannia Shield is meant to include new advanced radar systems and upgraded command and control systems as well as new interceptor missiles and counter-drone capabilities, though Badenoch was unable to say how many new components it would have, or how they would work.

The leader of the opposition was quickly forced to walk back a comparison to Israel's “Iron Dome” made in the Conservatives’ press release and an article she had written in the Sun.

“We are not building the Iron Dome... we are designing something specific for the kind of threat that we face here,” she told the BBC, as she sought to clear up some of the confusion about the announcement.

Though amounting to £1bn a year, the price tag has raised eyebrows among defence and procurement experts, who say it would not come close to being able to protect the nation.

“Ten billion pounds buys you something, but it’s not an impenetrable shield everywhere,” said Greg Bagwell, a retired RAF deputy commander and distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) thinktank. What the UK really needs, he wrote on X, is a layered system “designed to meet the most likely and most dangerous threats”.

The shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, has since defended the proposal, insisting that it was developed in conjunction with experts. “This is not a gimmick – we are deadly serious,” said Cartlidge, a former defence procurement minister.

Yet the haphazard launch of

Britannia Shield has shone a light on an uncomfortable truth: the UK is poorly equipped to defend itself from the rising threat of missile and drone attacks. Britain has a nuclear deterrent and relies on Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers and Nato allies to protect coastal and urban areas, but the country has no dedicated ground-based system to intercept ballistic missiles.

“The past spending decisions of successive British governments have deprioritised air and missile defence on the homeland to the extent where it is negligible,” said Keir Giles, an associate fellow at Chatham House.

Giles recently participated in The Wargame, a Sky TV series – based on a podcast from Sky News and Tortoise (owner of The Observer) – that sim-ulates what could happen if Russia attacked the UK. In it, real-world former politicians such as Michael Gove and Nicola Sturgeon made life-or-death decisions as part of an imagined British government.

“What the fictional cabinet was startled by is that there isn’t an integrated air missile defence system to deal with the threats that we would be facing now,” Giles said.

But what are these threats? What would an adversary target? And would new defences even work?

Threats against the UK range from an all-out assault on the country, much like the one Ukraine is experiencing, to a more minor drone incursion. Russia is widely seen as the most

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‘Russia wins wars by inflicting the maximum possible misery on civilians’

Keir Giles, Chatham House

likely aggressor: Moscow has repeatedly threatened Britain – including last month in response to The Wargame – and frames it as its No 1 enemy.

Pro-Kremlin commentators regularly mock the UK for its lack of a missile defence system – threats that should be taken seriously, according to experts.

The government's strategic defence review concluded last year that the UK and its allies must be ready to deter a full-scale war in the face of Russian aggression. In such a conflict, the report said, Britain should prepare for the possibility of air and missile attacks that target military and critical national infrastructure.

Separately, Danish intelligence has warned that the Kremlin could launch a limited military attack against a Nato country in the coming months, though it is unlikely that this target would be the UK.

The Britannia Shield plan pledges to prioritise protection of critical national infrastructure and military bases, including those overseas. But even this is a significant undertaking. The task of any effective missile defence system is to protect a nation about 11 times the size of Israel, with highly vulnerable critical infrastructure spread across its length and breadth.

The UK's main military bases include the army's Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire, RAF Fairfield in

Britain's key infrastructure

Major military bases

Air base

Army base

Naval base

Sources: Council on Geostrategy, The Crown Estate

Gloucestershire and His Majesty's Naval Base Devonport in Devon, but when you count reserves and smaller installations, there are more than 2,000 bases across the country. About 19 constituencies have 10 or more: Aldershot, the historical home of the British Army, has 37.

But any aerial attack is unlikely to be confined to military facilities.

“Russia wins wars by inflicting the maximum possible misery on the civilian population, rather than defeating the armed forces alone,” said Giles. “That means that critical national infrastructure and humanitarian facilities – the things that keep people alive – are likely to be in the forefront of the minds of Russian targeters.”

Britain's industrial heartlands, network of roads and bridges, strategic ports, nuclear power stations and other energy facilities would all need defending in a large-scale attack.

In all, the UK government recognises 13 critical national infrastructure sectors, including energy, civil nuclear, defence, transport, health and water. Some of these comprise thousands of individual assets, but the assets considered critical are those where the delivery of essential services could be harmed, or significant casualties inflicted, if lost or compromised.

An anti-ship and land-attack missile truck prepares to board an RAF plane.

Nile Austin/MoD

Even the most proven air defence systems are not perfect, however. Israel's Iron Dome, for example, is only about 90% effective at intercepting short-to-medium-range missiles, according to past claims by the Israel Defense Forces. Similarly, Donald Trump's "Golden Dome", a proposed system that would span the entire Earth at an estimated cost of up to \$3.6tn (£2.7tn), could be vulnerable to a full-scale attack.

"The reality, as is the case in Israel and Ukraine, is that missiles will get through any system," said Bagwell of Rusi. In the light of this, he added, a national resilience plan is also needed to fund the protection of key sites – a detail the Tory plan does not mention.

"The Conservative announcement lists radar, command systems and interceptors. It does not say whether

---

'The announcement... does not say whether resilience forms any part of the costing' Afzal Ashraf, academic

resilience forms any part of the costing," said Afzal Ashraf, a visiting fellow in international relations and security at Loughborough University.

Some experts have also warned that, even if Britannia Shield were built, it would do little to prevent the kinds of hybrid attack that are becoming increasingly commonplace in Europe today. A missile defence system would be powerless to stop a hacking attempt, or prevent Russia targeting enemies on UK soil or going after undersea cables.

You do not have to look far for evidence of how disruptive even a limited hybrid attack could be. In 2025, a fire at a substation in Hayes, west London – caused by an electrical fault rather than foreign interference

\- shut down Heathrow for a day at the cost of tens of millions of pounds.

Ultimately, cynics may argue that Britannia Shield is primarily intended as a challenge to Labour to increase defence spending rather than as a properly costed policy. “The Conservative party’s Britannia Shield may prove to be little more than a conference headline,” said Ashraf.

But the truth is that the government is struggling to meet the moment on UK defence. "There needs to be an overhaul of exactly what is relevant to meeting current threats, and that seems to be exactly what the Conservative party is thinking about," said Giles.

He added: “The alarming thing is that it’s the opposition that has had to come up with this because the government [hasn’t].”

Andy Burnham is now considering delaying an announcement about when and how Britain will increase defence spending to 3.5% of gross domestic product.

When it comes to shoring up our defences, kicking the can down the road is not an option, Giles believes. "The best time to start was a couple of decades ago," he said.

Keep us forever without borders

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HENRY GRAY HAS WORKED FOR MSF IN NUMEROUS CRISES AROUND THE WORLD.

"I've worked for MSF on and off for twenty years, but I still remember the first project I worked on. We were setting up a hospital in the middle of a forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There had been a lot of fighting in this area, and although the conflict had died down, the legacy of war was still very visible. About 125,000 people lived in the immediate area, but there were no services, and not even basic medical care was available. Women couldn't get caesareans if they needed them; there were no medicines, no vaccinations, and no treatment for diseases. It was a desperate situation, and that's when MSF sent us to get an emergency hospital up and running.

From the start, our goal was to provide medical care and save lives. But we knew that for this work to continue and to have lasting impact, we couldn't just provide medical care. We needed to bring the community on board; we needed to hire local staff and train local people to do the jobs that we were doing. So that's what we did.

It was fantastic to see the immediate impact of that lifesaving work. But what really surprised me was seeing how the hospital transformed the entire area. I still remember the day we switched on the generators that would power the lights in and around the hospital. Suddenly, schoolchildren started turning up to sit under the lights and do their homework. Over the weeks, businesses sprang up, and the local economy grew.

Over the years I’ve worked in war zones, in Ebola outbreaks and in natural disasters, and I’ve seen over and over again how the simple actions we take as MSF can have massive and positive knock-on effects for people, for their families and their communities.

But none of those simple acts happens without your support. MSF doesn't take money from governments. We're privately funded by people just like you. By leaving a gift in your will to MSF, you can know that your gift will not only save lives, but will change lives now and into the future. Thank you."

Above 4-year-old Franyeli receives medical care at MSF's mobile clinic in Puerto Alegre, Colombia. Photo: ©Natalia Romero Peñuela/MSF

"We will always be committed to providing care to those who need it. But that legacy is not ours alone."

Dr Rachael Craven,

Anaesthetist and President

Forever without borders – thanks to your support

For more than 50 years, we've brought medical care to people who urgently need it, no matter where they are. We've performed surgery on floors, in corridors and by the light of head torches. We've helped mothers deliver babies in warzones and resuscitated people caught up in explosions.

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Butt is it art? Sketch by former lover reveals the coy side of semi-clad Lucian Freud

Master of the modern nude was ‘embarrassed’ to pose fully naked for artwork expected to sell at auction for just £700

Donna Ferguson

He is famous for painting naked bodies with sagging flesh, often in unflinching detail. Now admirers of Lucian Freud will have the chance to buy a drawing of the artist's own scantily clad derrière – when a work by one of his former lovers goes under the hammer for a rock-bottom price.

The intimate drawing by Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, who was part of the Freud's wartime circle, is expected to sell for between £700 and £1,000.

It is part of a collection of 71 works from Shaw-Lawrence's archive, which will go on public display for the first time shortly before the artworks are sold at auction by auction house Cheffins in Cambridge on 22 October.

Shaw-Lawrence had an affair with Freud, who was reportedly too embarrassed to pose completely naked for the portrait, while they were students at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, Suffolk, in the early 1940s.

The art colony was founded by Cedric Morris and his lover, Arthur Lett-Haines, in Essex. By 1940 it was established at Benton End, a 16th-century house near Hadleigh, Suffolk. Other famous alumni include Maggi Hambling, Frances Hodgkins, and David Kentish, who was Shaw-Lawrence's boyfriend at the time when she and Freud became involved.

Freud later described her as “quite exciting, sort of corrupt in a tiny way. Priggish. I was 18 and I liked the idea of glamorous older women.”

Gabrielle Downie of Cheffins finds it amusing that one of the great contemporary painters of naked portraits was too prudish to remove his underwear while sitting for Shaw-Lawrence. “I think it’s quite a precious drawing. Although he’s not fully unsheathed, he is in a state of undress and quite vulnerable.”

Freud's feelings about the “glamorous” older artist may have influenced his pose. “She might have inspired him to let loose a bit,” Downie said.

Shaw-Lawrence died in 2018 and the archive is the largest body of her work to come to market. It includes landscapes, deserted streets, solitary figures, Mediterranean scenes and a painting of a variety of irises called Benton Menace, which were bred by Morris in the Benton End garden.

According to an interview Shaw-Lawrence gave to the British Art Journal in 2013, she was thrown out of the art school when Freud got hold of a pullover she had received as a gift from Kentish and refused to give it

Bettina Shaw-Lawrence's 1940s line drawing of Lucian Freud. Bettina Shaw-Lawrence Archive

Lucien freud

Back View of Venus

of Willendorf

Photo by Ali Meyer/Corbis/

VCG via Getty Images

Lady of Marseilles by Beryl Cook

©2026 John Cook

“Bettina has a visual language that makes her really interesting,” said Downie. “She was exceptional and as an artist she deserves to be looked at in her own right, and not... through the lens of these more famous men who have overshadowed her.”

Shaw-Lawrence went on to exhibit in London, Paris and New York into the 1960s. Her 1944 portrait of the poet David Emery Gascoyne is in the National Portrait Gallery. But her work was overlooked by critics.

Michelangelo's David

Ivan Moreno sl/Alamy Stock Photo

back, causing a fight between the two men. Kentish and Shaw-Lawrence were ordered to leave Benton End, while Freud was allowed to stay.

Self Portrait with Nude by Laura Knight

Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

A second portrait of Gascoyne is being offered in the Cheffins sale for between £200 and £400. Another highlight is Portrait of the artist – Enceinte, a 1948 nude self-portrait, valued at £300 to £500, showing her working while pregnant.

Donatello's David

Martin Beddall/Alamy Stock Photo

Rears to revere: there's something for everyone in my top five

As in life, bums in art come in all shapes and sizes. Lucian Freud's doesn't float my boat, but there are some I would pay much

more than £700 for. The National Portrait Gallery has since 2023 highlighted one of the collection's best: Laura Knight's cheeky 1913 self portrait. Knight had been a student at Nottingham School of Art in the 1880s, where she was excluded from classes using life models, lest their naked humanity violate her womanly sensibilities. She depicts herself painting an almost lifesize nude, posed by her friend and fellow artist Ella Naper.

It's a bold statement, about changing mores and women's ability to tackle taboo subjects – and it outs Naper as the possessor of a truly lovely bottom, tinged pink in the cold studio. Knight, meanwhile, is wearing a warm cardigan and a hat.

Naper's delightful derrière gets a run for its money, though, in the pert posteriors of art's most celebrated Davids – Michelangelo's 1504 marble sculpture, and another by his predecessor, Donatello. The latter's David, a lifesize bronze of a slender, androgynous youth, cast in about 1440, is caught in a contemplative moment after the fight, one foot resting on Goliath's severed head. He is inexplicably naked but for a helmet and leg guards, his geometrically perfect arse on full display.

Michelangelo revered Donatello but his own big D is an altogether different proposition: hyper-muscular, more than five metres tall, marble buttocks clenched with intent as waits to take his shot.

Admirable, yes, but more recent tastes may prefer Beryl Cook's fabulous Lady of Marseilles. Indeed, if you saw this woman in real life it would be hard to tear your eyes away from her barely contained behind, straining against an inadequate leopard print outfit as she walks her dogs along the French city streets. You can tell that bum dances on its own when she sashays down the street.

For me, the most touching of tushes, though, must be that of the Venus of Willendorf, a tiny, 30,000-year-old figurine of a fleshy, fecund woman, carved from limestone, tinted with red ochre, and designed to be held. Like all the best bottoms, she's the perfect handful. It's one of those high seats of which those of us in deep thrall to gravity can only dream.

‘It’s not just a Caribbean story’: Windrush’s forgotten victims

The majority of the Windrush generation did not come from Jamaica, but the label has left those from other parts of the Commonwealth unaware of their rights to restitution. Seun Matiluko and Hannah Schuller report

ADVANCED THREAT PROTECTION, ONLY FROM THE UK'S BEST BROADBAND

PROTECTING BRILLIANT THINGS

Chris Hayibor was only two when he came to England from Ghana with his family in the early 1970s and settled in a multicultural pocket of north-west London.

Like many families arriving from the Commonwealth in the decades after the Second World War, they had indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Britain is all he has ever known.

His troubles began 20 years ago when he was working as a bus driver and had to show his passport, birth certificate and driving licence as part of a routine check. After producing the documents, he left them in his car and went back to work. Then came some bad luck. “A string of cars had been broken into,” he says. “They took everything.”

The theft proved disastrous. To get a new driving licence he needed a passport, and to get a passport he needed a new birth certificate – which the Ghanaian government requires applicants to collect in person. Unable to leave the country without a passport, Hayibor was left without any form of ID. “I was stuck in a very bad situation,” he says.

He navigated life as best as he could, jumping between jobs. But in 2012 the government introduced policies known collectively as the “hostile environment”, which made life harder for immigrants without paperwork.

“We have to prove you have the right to work here,” was the constant refrain from Hayibor’s boss.

Hayibor says he felt compelled to resign from a job as a carer and has struggled to find work ever since. "My life just stopped," he recalls. "I was in such a dark place I went to the chemist and asked, 'If I bought a packet of Anadin and a bottle of vodka... Is that enough for me to take my own life?'"

People from the Windrush generation – who arrived in Britain between the late 1940s and early 1970s but didn’t have documentation to prove their right to be here – were being harmed by the hostile environment, and Hayibor was among those caught up in what came to be known as the Windrush scandal. But when the scandal was uncovered, he assumed it had nothing to do with him. “The way they made it sound, it was as if it was only about the Caribbean.”

Many people of south Asian or African descent have struggled to get the recognition or help they need.

At the time of the 2011 census, almost 600,000 people from the Commonwealth who arrived before 1971 were living in Britain. Of these, however, more than 450,000 came from non-Caribbean countries.

Yet Caribbean nationals account for the majority of claims under the Windrush compensation scheme, which was set up in 2019. Between

Rate of Windrush compensation scheme applications

Per 10,000 eligible nationals, 2020 to July 2026

Sources: ONS, Home Office

then and July 2026, there were 761 claims from people of Caribbean descent compared with 577 from the rest of the Commonwealth.

Campaigners say this disparity is partly the result of the decision to name the scandal and scheme after the ship that brought one of the first large groups of people to Britain from the Caribbean in 1948.

Those affected say cultural and economic factors at play mean people who arrived from other parts of the Commonwealth are less likely to have been victims of the scandal. Others believe that institutional bias, particularly against those from west Africa, has caused families to effectively slip through the cracks.

Neil Mukherjee was born in Huddersfield in the early 1970s to parents of Indian heritage. He said many south Asian victims have not come forward because they do

Windrush compensation scheme claims

Received by the Home Office to July 2026

\- Caribbean

• South Africa
• West Africa
• South Asia
• Commonwealth

‘We need to do something [about the name Windrush] because everyone thinks of that boat’ Jacqueline McKenzie, lawyer

not want to cause trouble. “Many south Asian people who have been impacted are afraid of the British system... they just don’t want to rock the boat,” he says.

Mukherjee's family fell foul of what some lawyers call the "Windrush trap". Their indefinite leave to remain lapsed during a trip to India and his mother and brother, who were born there, got stuck in "no man's land" and were prevented from returning to Britain.

After decades of fighting, Mukherjee's brother regained his right to live in Britain in 2002. His mother did the same in 2024, after applying to the Windrush scheme, which the government set up in 2018 to help people with the right to be in Britain obtain documentation proving it. Mukherjee said he believed the “Windrush” branding explained the smaller number of non-Caribbean claims. “It wasn’t promoted and packaged as a Commonwealth scandal,” he says.

The term “Windrush generation” was coined by British-Jamaican activist Sam King to describe the 1948 arrivals on the HMT Empire Windrush, but over time it has become more flexible and is now regularly used to refer to people who came from the Caribbean throughout the postwar era. The ministry of housing, which allocates funding for organisations wishing to celebrate the Windrush generation, defines it as exclusively Caribbean.

But the Home Office's definition is more expansive than many inside and outside of government realise, describing the generation

Chris Hayibor,

originally

from Ghana,

top, assumed

the Windrush

compensation

schemes did not

apply to him.

Above: Neil Mukherjee with his older brother, Sean, in 1977, before his sibling lost his visa.

Antonio Olmos/ The Observer

as including all arrivals from the Commonwealth during the postwar period up to the early 1970s.

Jacqueline McKenzie, a leading immigration lawyer who was at one stage approached to become the government's Windrush commissioner, said it is known that the terminology is confusing.

“Every home secretary or senior permanent secretary blames the previous one [...] for calling it ‘the Windrush’,” she says. “They say, ‘We need to do something about that because everybody thinks of that boat and they think of not even just the Caribbean but Jamaica’... But the Windrush generation does actually include west Africans and south Asians.”

The Home Office has quietly renamed the Windrush taskforce, which supports people with Windrush scheme applications, as the Commonwealth taskforce.

Source: Home Office

McKenzie says she was also told of plans to replace the word “Windrush” with “Commonwealth” in the names of the two schemes set up to help victims of the scandal, but they have yet to materialise.

The number of people who have potentially fallen through the cracks is not clear, but could be large.

In 2019 Meg Hillier, then chair of the government's public accounts committee, raised a concern with the Home Office that about 160,000 non-Caribbean Commonwealth nationals may be missing out on support. An independent review in 2020 advised the Home Office to “look beyond the Caribbean” and “be more proactive in identifying people affected”, but in 2022, an independent progress evaluation found the recommendation had only been partially met.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The home secretary is determined to put right the appalling injustices caused by the Windrush scandal, making sure those affected receive justice and the compensation they rightly deserve. We are actively raising awareness of the Windrush compensation scheme among African, South Asian and other non-Caribbean communities."

mmanuel Ani came to England in 1972 aged seven, travelling under his mother's passport. When he was 15, his parents took him back to Nigeria for what he thought was a holiday. He ended up stuck there.

"My first few years were hell," he says in an accent that hints at his British upbringing. "I found it really hard, culturally and environmentally – it was suffocating."

As soon as he reached adulthood, Ani says he made attempts to return to Britain but was stonewalled by high commission staff in Abuja and Lagos. He only applied to the Windrush scheme because a British cousin told him about it. He has since applied for a returning resident visa under the Windrush scheme and been rejected. Both his parents were British, as are five siblings. But although England no longer feels like home to Ani, now in his 60s, the principle is important. "I want my rights. [A visa] is not a privilege, it's my right."

Ani's family say cases of people stuck for decades in the Caribbean who have since been granted

Circle size denotes number of claims per country

returning resident visas through the Windrush scheme are evidence that Nigerians are being treated unfairly.

When The Observer asked the Home Office, via a freedom of information request, for a breakdown of the number of Windrush scheme applications by country of nationality, it said “the cost of locating and collating any relevant information and extracting the information” would be too great.

“Nigerians and Ghanaians seem to be getting a harder time,” McKenzie says. “Is it because the discrimination towards them is different, or simply because the Home Office thinks the numbers of eligible applicants could be huge?”

Roland Houslin, founder of campaign group Justice for Windrush Generations, says: “There is a definite bias against west Africans in general... There is an assumption that applications are fraudulent.” But others warn that talk of anti-west African bias risks playing into divide-and-rule politics.

“Every person engaged in the Windrush scheme is being treated detrimentally,” says Pauline Campbell, a lawyer who works with charity Justice 4 Windrush and is helping Hayibor fight the Home Office for citizenship. “If we say they are biased towards Jamaicans, that makes it look as if Jamaicans are getting a better deal,” she says. “No one is getting a good deal.”

Significant hurdles remain for those applying to the compensation scheme. The majority – 66% – of applicants are unsuccessful or receive nothing, and those living abroad face acute challenges.

Unlike most, Hayibor has received some compensation – he is arguing for more to better reflect his years of suffering. But he has repeatedly been denied citizenship. His latest rejection came days before he was invited to this year's Windrush Day celebrations at Downing Street.

But Hayibor has reason to be optimistic. He has used the universal credit support he now receives to pay for a bus driver training course, was able to persuade TfL to consider an application and last month was offered a job as a driver. He cannot wait to get back behind the wheel.

"The day I get back on the bus, I'm taking everybody out for a meal," he says. "I've got so much to look forward to... I didn't have anyone helping me but now I do. And that's given me a chance."

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You may not think of yourself as an investor and you wouldn't be alone. Just 36% of UK adults agreed with the statement "investing is for someone like me", according to a recent ISA Barometer report from industry body the Investment Association.

You may associate investing with a wealthy professional who has extensive financial knowledge and large sums of money to set aside. But in fact, this is far from the case.

“More than eight in 10 workers now pay into a workplace pension, meaning investing is already part of everyday financial life for most households,” says John Owen, chief executive of the Investment Association.

Investing beyond a pension may feel like a bigger step though, which is natural. "We know from the Barclays Investment Readiness

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Investing could be for you.

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"Investing really is for the long term," says Wiggins. "Whether it is home ownership or a comfortable retirement, investing can help achieve those financial ambitions."

There are a whole range of ways people can start investing and it doesn't necessarily mean picking your own stocks and shares. Some platforms will offer ready-made portfolios, so you don't even have to choose your own investments.

If you're saving money in a cash account each month, perhaps some of that money is in a Cash ISA, which means that any interest you earn is tax-free.

But what's also available to savers in the UK is a Stocks and Shares ISA. With a Stocks and Shares ISA, you can invest your money without paying UK tax on any potential growth on your investments.

Investing offers the potential for higher long-term growth than money earning interest in cash savings accounts, although in the short-term your money might fluctuate.

"It is natural to feel nervous about investments going up and down, but it's important to remember that investing is a long-term commitment," says Owen. "The key is to think about when you'll need the money, and the longer you can leave it invested, the more time it has to grow." In fact, the top reason why people have a Stocks and Shares ISA is because they believe that investing will give a better long-term return than a Cash ISA, stated by $54\%$ of holders in the ISA Barometer report.

About 51% of Stocks and Shares ISA investors say their goal is to save for retirement, highlighting how investing can form part of longer-term financial planning.

A recent report by Barclays bank, titled The Missed Opportunity of Not Investing, found that from 2004 to 2024, money held in an average cash savings account would have reduced in value by 40.5%, once the effects of inflation are accounted for – even including interest paid on those cash savings.

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One in five UK adults (21%) said they were likely to start with a small, regular investment of £10 to £50 in 2026, according to the Investment Association's figures.

The benefit of investing little and often is that you can start small while you feel more comfortable and familiar with investing – particularly if you've never seen it as something that applies to you before.

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If investing still feels unfamiliar, there's no need to make a decision immediately. Your first step might simply be to learn more about how investing differs from saving, and whether it's suitable for your own life goals, once you've built a rainy-day fund.

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Virtual courts set up to tackle backlog of cases in England and Wales

Similar technology is used to stream some cases live in Scotland. Getty Images

Ministry of Justice pilots scheme allowing hearings to take place remotely as MPs debate bill removing rights to a jury trial

Rachel Sylvester

Political editor

Virtual courts that will enable cases to be heard by judges anywhere in England or Wales are being trialled by the Ministry of Justice in an attempt to drive down the backlog.

Technology will bring together judges, defendants, lawyers, court staff and witnesses online, so that people do not need to travel to court.

The new system, which is being piloted in London and Sheffield, will mean court cases can be transferred digitally to judges hundreds of miles away, relieving pressure on the busiest courts with the longest delays.

The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service already uses virtual hearings for many civil and procedural cases.

More than 80,000 cases are stuck in the crown court backlog in England and Wales, but there are big regional variations. London has the biggest backlog, or “open caseload”, accounting for 25% of unresolved cases, followed by the south-east, with 19%, and the Midlands with 18%.

Courts in the north-east of England have far smaller backlogs. In the first quarter of this year, the open case-load for London increased by 4% but decreased by 3% in the north-east.

The plan comes as the courts and 'The criminal justice system was on the verge of collapse. Victims have faced unacceptable delays'

Sarah Sackman KC MP

tribunals bill returns to be debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Under Andy Burnham, the government will table amendments removing the proposal for jury trials to be replaced in some criminal cases by a judge sitting alone, as was proposed by Keir Starmer's administration.

But defendants will still lose the right to choose whether their case goes before a jury or a magistrate.

The virtual courts are inspired by the virtual wards that were first rolled out in the NHS during the pandemic. Patients can be monitored at home, with vital statistics transferred digitally to doctors and nurses, meaning more people can be treated without taking up hospital beds.

The Ministry of Justice said the pilot would not include criminal trials, but all the other stages of a criminal proceeding, such as sentencing and case management, would be covered.

If the scheme is successful it could eventually be expanded, raising the prospect of virtual juries delivering their verdict via a screen. Participants will have the right to apply to the judge for a face-to-face hearing.

Sarah Sackman, the courts minister, said virtual courts would speed up justice for victims, who are sometimes waiting years for cases to come to trial. “The criminal justice system we inherited was on the brink of collapse,” she said.

“Hearings were cancelled at the last minute and victims have faced unacceptable delays. We are pulling every lever to change this and deliver justice for victims.

"This transformational pilot harnesses the power of technology to connect courts across the country, making better use of resources."

The scheme is being rolled out in line with the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr's latest guidance on the use of technology in court.

New arrangements have also been agreed with the National Police Chiefs' Council and the Crown Prosecution Service to expand the use of live video links for police witness evidence.

There will be concerns about whether the technology available in courts will be able to cope with the introduction of digital justice.

A survey by the Law Society last year found that one in five respondents said the technology in the courts was “not at all” fit for purpose. Lawyers reported software problems and a lack of working plug sockets.

Claire Waxman, the victims' commissioner for England and Wales, warned last week that radical structural change was required.

Responding to the announcement that jury trial reforms were being dropped, she said: “Victims are entitled to ask whether what remains will be enough to meet the challenge. Indeed, they are being asked to place their faith in a plan that ministers themselves previously argued would not be [enough].”

Is your dog rightwing? A reluctant centrist? Woke? Ask the oracle on canine politics

After a Labour MP associated labradors with the far right, Oliver Mather mustered his AI skills and sunk his teeth into an issue that has dog owners yapping. Lily Isaacs reports

Dinky, a fluffy white poodle, is a “reluctant centrist” who “prioritises both low taxes and a regular blow-dry”. Kitty, a springer spaniel, is a “vigorous proponent” of country values – a “traditionalist” who believes in “investigating the herbaceous borders”. Walter, a greyhound, is “full woke oat-milk collectivist” with a “strong belief in social welfare” and has secured a strong “duvet pension”.

IS HEREBY FOUND TO BE

Radicalised from the Biscuit Tin

Marley, like every Labrador, believes in trickle-down economics, specifically sausages trickling down from the table.

All these dogs are recent entries to the new website Is My Dog Far Right?, created by Oliver Mather, a 39-year-old client director, in response to Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter's recent foray into canine politics.

I. Puppy sitting: Marley will steal from any kitchen worktop, believing firmly in the deregulation of the fruit bowl.

Speaking at the Labour conference, the parliamentary under-secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs described a Britain of black labradors, warm ale and country pubs as a “far-right nostalgic vision” that “never really existed”. Her comments were widely mocked online, but Mather decided to take the joke one step further.

II. Red satin bow: This dog gazes adoringly at whoever holds the biscuit tin, showing unquestioning loyalty to the establishment.

He used multiple AI models to build the website, which has attracted almost a thousand submissions and counting since it went live last week.

"I didn't do it as a political thing. I just thought what the story had within it was classic English farce and humour," he said, adding that Riddell-Carpenter's interpretation was "slightly mischievous", though "funny and ill-deserved".

"My mum is on her third black labrador and I regard it as my furry sister," he said. "They're such lovely dogs. I thought it was a funny juxtaposition."

Mather, who used Google Gemini to create images, Claude for amusing

FINDINGS OF THE BUREAU

'Dogs are pure souls that don't have political allegiances. That's where the silliness comes in'

Oliver Mather

remarks and a bit of ChatGPT for the rest, added that the algorithm isn't "politically correct".

He prompted the AI until it reached the point where it was “funny enough” and could correspond with a view of the world where labradors skewed more rightwing. Then he taught it to “balance the dog’s environment to what the dog looks like and its breed”, after which the AI could invent its own comments “that are supposed to be grounded dog behaviour and truisms”.

Although Mather insists the bots were not trained on political data, the results seem a pretty close match to the voting demographic. A German shepherd in Brighton, for example

– which voted Green in the general and council elections – is a “dangerously inclusive canine” who “shows an active interest in community organising”.

Reform's rise does not appear to have translated to the canine population: in the party's emerging heartlands of Kent and Essex, the furthest-right dog was a "reluctant centrist" pug in Rochester. One black labrador appeared to have been radicalised in Ipswich, where Reform won 10 of 16 council seats in the May elections. That dog, Milo, believes that "all territory, especially the sofa, is rightfully his".

“We’re a nation of dog lovers,” Mather said. “As far as I consider it, they’re pure souls that don’t have political allegiances. That’s where the silliness comes in.”

---

Breed all about it

The Observer ran a list of famous dogs through the system

Marley

Marley from the 2008 film Marley & Me emerged as a dog who would "like to bring back a great many things, starting with the 1950s".

Dodo

Churchill's beloved bulldog Dodo, surprisingly, was deemed a "compassionate canine" and a "champion of the marginalised".

Pongo and Perdita

The parental pooches from the 1996 film 101 Dalmatians are "profoundly progressive" and "dangerously collectivist".

Beethoven

Beethoven, the St Bernard from the eponymous 1991 film, is a “hearty centrist” who is “generally suspicious of outsiders”.

Muick and Sandy

Queen Elizabeth II was famously tight-lipped about her politics but anything but when it came to her corgis. Muick and Sandy emerged as shire Tories who believe that all citizens should “remain on a lead”.

Henry

The beagle-basset hound who is the latest Blue Peter dog, is an “oat-milk collectivist” who believes all strangers should be welcomed.

---

The bedroom chair debate: where to put old clothes?

Patrick Kidd

On Instagram they call it the “chairdrobe”. Social media has thousands of videos about a common problem: the pile of clothes on a bedroom chair that has not been sat on for months. Not dirty enough to go in the laundry basket, but not clean enough to go back in the drawer, the pile sits there, scolding you.

Two years ago, Simone Giertz, a 35-year-old Swedish inventor, came up with the idea for a bedroom chair with a semi-circular armrest that rotates around it, allowing people to drape clothes over the rail and then swing it round out of sight. It is a simple idea but to judge by her order book a much wanted one.

A 14-minute YouTube video by Giertz of her building her prototype has been viewed more than 2.5m times. This encouraged her to explore a crowd-funded project to make them commercially. When she launched it on Kickstarter in March, she hoped to get \$50,000 in orders for her \$1,100 answer to bedroom clutter. Within a month, she had raised more than \$1.2m (about £900,000). The first flat-pack assembly chairs, with upholstery in green or red corduroy, are now being dispatched to her backers.

“This was one of those projects where I can’t believe this isn’t already a thing,” said Giertz, who is based in Los Angeles but works with a designer in Hastings and had the chair manufactured in China.

Giertz said she got the idea from the lazy Susan turntables used to circulate food in restaurants. “I take a small everyday problem and try to figure out a smarter and different way of doing it,” she said. The first batch of orders sold out quickly, with a third of the second run also now sold via Yetch, her design company, named after the way her surname should be pronounced.

The laundry chair has a semi-circular armrest that rotates around it.

Last month, House & Garden magazine invited interior designers to suggest ways in which people could be encouraged not to clutter their bedroom chairs: suggestions included hooks on the wall, wooden towel rails or even to have a piece of sculpture that you won't want hidden under once-worn jumpers.

“I do find all of those vaguely transitory clothes rather depressing,” the designer Suzy Hoodless told the magazine.

This is not the first time Giertz has tackled the problem of how to manage clothes. Admitting that laundry “has become something of a muse”, she also invented the Coat Hinger, a hanger that folds in half for people with less storage space.

The Drumcree parade went viral. For once, the world was watching

The Armagh town was seen as a microcosm of the Troubles. This year social media reminded people why

Róisín Lanigan

The last time Drumcree made headlines, there was no TikTok. Every year, for most of the 1980s and 1990s, the little Armagh town became a microcosm for the wider Troubles with its contentious Orange Order parade. The riots and protests that ensued required huge amounts of policing. This time, the town on the southern shore of Lough Neagh has become an unexpected viral sensation. Content creators from around the world are posting about it; drones fly overhead to capture the size of the crowds who have gathered to protest, and everyone from Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald to Noel Gallagher and the band Kneecap has shown up to lend support to residents.

If you weren't familiar with the context of Drumcree, all of this might seem bizarre. After all, this is a tiny place in the middle of a tiny place. If you grew up there, as I did, it cuts closer to home. Since 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement came into place and the Parades Commission was introduced, the Orange Order has been banned from marching from Drumcree Parish Church to the Garvaghy Road, a minority Catholic neighbourhood in the predominantly Protestant town of Portadown. But this year a legal battle overturned that decision, allowing a scaled-back procession of 35 Orangemen to march through the area.

In response, Garvaghy Road residents and thousands of supporters blocked the route from 27 September until Friday night, when the Northern Ireland secretary, Sir Chris Bryant, intervened to ban the Drumcree parade, ending the two-week deadlock.

Across social media, this dispute has taken on a memetic quality. It's seen as a joke, in other words, described by some as a typically bizarre "Northern Ireland subplot" – a footnote, in other words, to more important current events. Scenes of portly Orangemen trying and failing to walk up a small stretch of the road at night circulated on X and TikTok. Seen on small screens for the first time, the Orange Order looked ridiculous. The keening protesters provided a perfect heroic foil for the algorithm.

Police stop Orange Order marchers, above. The band Kneecap backed residents, left. Charles McQuillan/ Getty

As with all viral news stories, this flattens and ignores much of the bloody context of the Drumcree dispute, which erupted in violence every summer for most of the 1980s and 1990s. It led to a number of deaths; Michael McGoldrick, a Catholic taxi driver, was murdered in 1996 by the Ulster Volunteer Force. Solicitor Rosemary Nelson and police officer Frank O'Reilly were killed in 1999 and 1998. The murders most often cited in relation to Drumcree are those of the Quinn brothers, three Catholic children killed in a firebomb attack on their home in a Protestant area.

The viral videos also overlook the fact that the residents are not protesting about unionists or Protestants accessing their neighbourhood. Only 5% of Protestants in Northern Ireland are members of the Orange Order, an organisation so ultra conservative that the 40,000 men who are members are banned from marrying Catholics. The statement from Democratic Unionist party MP Carla Lockhart that “the Garvaghy Road residents have nothing to fear from the Orange Order” left people bemused, if only for the fact that the very purpose of the Orange Order is to create fear and demonstrate dominance.

On Friday night the residents breathed a sigh of relief as the parade was banned once again, but the Orange Order vowed to fight the decision. Celebratory scenes worlds apart from the violence of past decades flooded social media. For all its flaws, there is a benefit to the conflict's internet vitality; the difference this time is that the world is watching.

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Hero to zero: Julie, the most trusted Faithful, sealed her fate over breakfast

Banished: Julia Hesmondhalgh, above, and Myha'la. BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry

Experts opine on the latest banishment from the castle, and the toll that living a lie takes on reluctant Traitors

Stephen Armstrong

How the trustworthy have fallen. Julie Hesmondhalgh, the beloved former Coronation Street actor who played Alan Bates's honest, dependable wife in Mr Bates vs the Post Office, was banished from the castle by an overwhelming majority on Friday, despite having been elected the “most trustworthy” Faithful earlier in the new series of Celebrity Traitors.

"I was so sketchy: I'd gone in hard on Richard, I'd gone in hard on Myha'la, but I thought 'I'm saying too much'," said Hesmondhalgh, referring to the British actor Richard E Grant and the American actor whom she had helped oust.

“So I was planning to just sit back, little knowing that I was chief suspect,” she said. “Then suddenly it turned to me, and I was absolutely rubbish. At one point my mouth dried up to absolutely nothing and my hand was shaking... I knew I looked really guilty. It was textbook."

But in the psychological crucible of the Celebrity Traitors castle, Hesmondhalgh had condemned herself long before she took a seat at the round table, says Dr Paddy Ross, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University.

“Especially at the beginning, there’s

Celebrity Traitor

Maya Jama tells

Basia Cummings

she has entered

her ‘villain era’:

The Observer

Magazine

herd mentality and confirmation bias taking the place of evidence and reason," Ross said. "Any little standout display of emotion or unusual behaviour... can mark you. Julie had a big reaction at breakfast and refused to share her theories on her final day. That's enough to create a feeling of guilt, and then people largely ignore any evidence to the contrary."

He wonders if there's an in-group-out-group selection at work, noting that the first player to be banished, apart from Grant, was American, and that suspicion then fell on the two older women: Hesmondhalgh and Jerry Hall.

“Meanwhile, there’s the halo effect on display, where if you perceive a pleasant trait about somebody, you assume that they must possess other good traits. The comedians do well thanks to this,” he said. “Someone who was a Traitor would never make you laugh and feel happy. In the first series, a giggling Alan Carr saying he's a Faithful, and getting away with it, is [the] halo effect and confirmation bias flying in face of evidence."

This strategy may not endure. Clare Birchall, professor of contemporary culture at King's College London, argues that the power of keeping and revealing secrets can make or break Faithful and Traitor alike.

“Julie was adept at figuring out secrets, but she failed to be a convincing truth teller, withholding information from the others,” she said.

Birchall notes the psychological struggles of reluctant Traitors Hannah Fry and James Acaster. “It’s a huge cognitive load to defy the social convention to tell the truth. The sociologist Ervin Goffman described our ‘front stage’ behaviour – the persona we present to the world – and our ‘back stage’ true selves, who collapse exhausted at the end of the day,” she said. “For a Traitor, the back stage is entirely stripped away during waking hours... This complete lack of a recovery zone causes immense cognitive load and psychological exhaustion.”

Acaster, a former Faithful who was recruited to be a Traitor, is in a strong position thanks to his strategy of pretending he hasn't been turned. "It's the way people defeat lie detectors," he explains.

Skullduggery aside, this season continues to pull in huge audiences: overnight ratings for Friday were 9.3 million. Talk about the halo effect.

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For first-time buyers today, 6% mortgages are as brutal as 12% rates were in the 80s

Global events have pushed borrowing rates to their highest level in three years, but that doesn't mean we should expect a

1990s-style crash, writes Ben Zaranko

The average interest rate on a new five-year mortgage deal rose to 6% last week, the highest in three years. The halcyon days of mortgage rates starting with the figure two are far behind us, but things have changed materially even since last month.

Moneyfacts, a financial information provider, found that nearly 1,500 fixed mortgage products were priced below 5% at the start of September; now, there are effectively none.

This shift isn't the result of anything Andy Burnham's government has done. Nor is it because of the Bank of England changing its interest rate, which has been held at $3.75\%$ since last December. Instead, it's the result of global events.

About $90\%$ of people now opt for a fixed-rate mortgage, up from around half in the late 2000s, as borrowers seek certainty in a volatile world. That means it's financial market expectations for average interest rates over the next few years that determine what these cost, rather than the interest rate today. And investors now expect the Bank of England to raise interest rates several times, and keep them higher for longer, in the face of inflationary pressure from higher energy prices (driven by events in the Middle East) and higher food prices (driven by the El Niño weather pattern). Hence higher mortgage rates.

This is tough for those rolling off a previous, lower fixed-rate mortgage and having to refinance at an inopportune moment. Mortgage holders tend to be on higher-than-average incomes and will have been “stress-tested” by lenders to check they can afford higher repayments. Nonetheless, those with the most mortgage debt tend to be in middle age, at the point in life when many are also juggling the costs of childcare and/or care for an elderly parent. A jump in mortgage repayments can add a lot of financial stress.

In the face of higher rates, first-time buyers have sought to keep down monthly repayments by opting for ever-longer mortgages. The average term for a first-time buyer is now more than 31 years, according to data from UK Finance, where 25 years was once standard. Even so, average monthly repayments amount to almost $23\%$ of income. They haven't been that high since 2008.

One reason why this statistic is perhaps less scary than it first appears is that household finances are stronger overall than two decades ago. “The average household has less in the way of other debt, such as credit card debt, than they did in the late 2000s. That means they’re better placed to make the mortgage payments,” said James Tatch, head of analytics at UK Finance. But undoubtedly households are still feeling the squeeze.

Some readers may well remember interest rates rising much higher than 6%, and wonder what today's borrowers are complaining about.

One important difference is that the average first-time buyer now borrows 3.6 times their income; in the 1980s,

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it was more like two times. Making comparisons of mortgage affordability across the generations is tricky, but I estimate the average first-time buyer today taking out a mortgage at 6%, on the now-average 31-year term, would spend 25% of their monthly income on repayments. Forty years ago, someone with a then-standard 25-year mortgage would have had to face a 12% rate before repayments hit a quarter of their income. In other words, 6% is the new 12%.

At these rates, there's a disconnect between the price at which people can afford to buy and the price at which homeowners are willing to sell. So, what happens next?

Some sellers will be forced to lower the price. But with economic conditions relatively benign, and plenty of older folk insulated from higher rates because they own their home outright, many can afford to wait.

“By and large, I expect people to sit on their hands, rather than sell at a price they're not happy with,” said Neal Hudson, housing market analyst for BuiltPlace. “So, rather than a big downward price adjustment, it's more likely the housing market will gum up, and transactions will fall.”

So while mortgage costs may be approaching levels not seen in decades, that doesn't mean we should expect an early-1990s style house-price crash. A stagnant market feels more likely, especially for family homes, which are often mortgage-free, and in London and the south-east, where buyers need the biggest loans and rates hit hardest.

And let's not forget the renters in all of this. If would-be first-time buyers can't afford what sellers are holding out for, they'll stay renting for longer.

That will mean more competition for properties, which will push up rents. Eventually, if house prices stand still while incomes rise, homes should become a bit more affordable.

But that may be of limited comfort to someone whose rising rent is making it harder to save for a deposit.

---

First-time buyer mortgages average 3.6 times annual income

Source: UK Finance

First-time buyers spend over a fifth of income on mortgage payments

How fury over Spain's housing crisis finally boiled over

---

James Badcock Madrid

About 20,000 protesters filed in silence through Madrid last week to pay homage to María Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose death two weeks after being evicted on a stretcher by a property fund has plunged Spain into grief and anger.

As they marched from Madrid's Puerta del Sol to the building that Abascal had called home for more than 70 years, the protesters passed housing blocks where the price of a flat is now a fantasy for most.

Madrid's property market is red hot thanks to soaring demand caused by tourism, a rising population and a lack of public policies for housing those on medium or low incomes. The cost of buying a square metre in the city has ballooned from €3,750 (£3,177) to €6,450 in less than five years, according to the property platform Idealista. Across Spain, average house prices have shot up by 80% since 2015, with rents up by 87%, while salaries have risen by just 28%, merely keeping pace with inflation.

Abascal's story has become an eloquent parable of what has changed in Spain, a country where affordable flats once seemed abundant.

A retired secretary, she was paying €500 a month on a regulated rental contract she had taken over from her mother in 2005. In 2018, property company Urbagestión bought her flat for 240,000, a low price for a property that is today estimated to be worth more than three times that. The firm said it was tripling her rent, then set about trying to evict her, using a technical flaw in her inheritance of the contract from her mother.

Spain currently has a desperate housing shortage. The number of new units built per year has fallen from more than half a million two decades ago to 95,000 today. Demand is fuelled by immigration and a tourism boom. According to the Bank of Spain, the deficit in housing units has reached 750,000.

After an eight-year legal battle, Abascal's case had become a potent symbol for anti-eviction activists. The outcry that erupted as she lay in hospital after being evicted persuaded

Urbagestión to enter negotiations with her lawyer. She had been due to sign a new deal the day she died.

By then the leftwing prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, had called a snap election after parliament rejected the proposed “Maricarmen laws” to prevent evictions, control rents and automatically roll over contracts.

“I’m never going to be able to leave my parents’ house,” said Luis Santos, a 23-year-old student. “Our politicians are too corrupt to stand up to the speculators and deliver what should be a human right.”

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ON OTHER PAGES Obituary: María Carmen Abascal Forum, page 44

Your First Home wants to help new buyers, but builders may win bigger

COMMENTARY

Rowan

Moore

Architecture critic

The government and the big housebuilders, according to an industry insider, "are like two drunk men holding each other

up, but then kicking each other in the ankles". The former needs the latter to meet targets for numbers of new homes. The latter needs the former to create the incentives and regulatory frameworks that create profit for their shareholders.

This situation is one explanation for Your First Home, a plan to help first-time buyers with government-supported loans. “This will,” said Andy Burnham, during his rousing Labour party conference speech in Liverpool, “open up home ownership to those not backed by the bank of mum and dad.”

It is a great aim, no doubt sincerely held. The proposal comes at a time when the government's target of building 1.5m new homes in England during its prospective five-year term, announced by Angela Rayner in her first stint as housing secretary, is looking like a distant prospect.

According to recent figures, the quarterly rate of planning approvals for new homes in England is at its lowest since 2012. The target was based on the belief, encouraged by builders, that planning reform would unlock new construction. Reform was duly implemented, but the hoped-for flood of new properties has not followed. Reasons for this include building costs far ahead of inflation and a declining appetite by investors to put money into constructing houses.

So Your First Home sets out to be “a much-needed stimulus to support the market and boost housing supply”, according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). It has been welcomed by the Home Builders Federation. Its chief executive, Neil Jefferson, said the scheme has the “potential to make a real difference to households who are struggling to get on to the housing ladder”. His sector, he continued, “is ready to play its part, delivering new homes and jobs at pace”.

Details are to be confirmed in this month's budget, but it is expected to offer $20\%$ loans to first-time buyers of new-build properties. It looks much like Help to Buy, an initiative launched in 2013 by then chancellor George Osborne that also offered government-backed loans. A significant difference between the two schemes is that buyers will be asked to put up a 2.5% deposit under Your First Home, down from its predecessor's 5%.

Help to Buy, says its supporters, increased housing output and helped hundreds of thousands of buyers into the market. Where deposits have been paid back and properties resold at a profit, the Treasury has done well. “As government interventions go, that’s a good one,” said the industry insider.

But there have been losers as well as winners. Help to Buy increased house prices generally – by how much is a subject of debate – making homes harder to access for those who could not benefit from the scheme. Buyers of flats, rather than houses, especially in London, have been hit hard by large drops in value because of increased service charges after the Grenfell Tower fire.

The 2013 scheme, it could be argued, encouraged people to make bad decisions that many of them were ill-placed to afford. Paula Higgins, chief executive of the HomeOwners Alliance, while saying that Your First Home could “make a positive contribution” by helping people who struggle to raise a deposit, also cautions that it increases the risk of negative equity.

In 2019 a Channel 4 documentary found 295 faults in a single house built by Persimmon, one of the main beneficiaries of Help to Buy. Meanwhile, former company chief executive Jeff Fairburn notoriously pocketed a bonus of £75m – reduced after a public outcry from £100m – with help from profits derived from the scheme. Businesses such as Persimmon, it seemed, were as much beneficiaries of government largesse as aspiring home buyers. Its shares rose by 14.7% after the announcement of Your First Home, which suggests that history may, to some degree, repeat itself.

The government is keen to stress that Your First Home is not its only tool for addressing the housing need. A spokesman for the MHCLG said it is also investing £39bn in social and affordable housing. He promised that it will take steps to guard against the failings of Help to Buy, saying it will “ensure that developers participating in the scheme comply fully with the required standard”, and “require developer contributions to ensure the sector shares in the cost of delivering the scheme”.

Your First Home relies on the premise that what is good for housebuilders is also good for home buyers. It will benefit some and could harm others. It is perhaps best seen as a fix for the awkward situation in which the government finds itself. It is not – and does not really claim to be – a solution for the country's housing needs.

Walking along a north London towpath, America's renowned public intellectual talks to Giles Whittell about the end of Trump, becoming a global guru and why writing off his Harley wasn't enough to stop him riding

MAP BY ELLIE WINTOUR

Camley Street Natural Park viewing platform

HS2 under Regent's Canal

'People want something more. A lot of extremism is a reflection of that fact'

B efore he moved to California, Francis Fukuyama spent some of the money he earned from his enormously

successful first book on a motorbike. It was a Harley, a “full bagger” – half a tonne of steel and chrome with a full fairing at the front and touring panniers at the back.

One evening he hit a wet pile of leaves. “I was on a narrow road coming up to my house and it just slipped into the incoming traffic and there was a truck straight ahead of me,” he says. He managed to manoeuvre the bike out of the path of the truck, but it fell over, “and basically I broke a whole bunch of ribs”. The Harley was a write-off.

It seems sensible to take a taxi instead of Lime bikes from his hotel to the start of our walk along the Grand Union canal, in London.

Fukuyama, 73, is probably America's best-known public intellectual. Plenty of others may claim the title but none has grappled with the state of the world and the meaning of history on quite as grand a scale. He is the protean thinker who at 36 made his name with a theory that the fall of the

Berlin Wall marked an end-point of sorts – a plateau, at least – in the evolution of human civilisation.

The theory was first floated as an article in the right-of-centre National Interest magazine, which a former junior editor there remembers selling faster than pornography from newsstands in Washington when it came out in the summer of 1989. The article became a book, The End of History and the Last Man. It was an instant bestseller that Fukuyama says was comprehensively misunderstood.

The first thing to understand correctly about it is its title. “The last man is a contemptuous phrase of Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, for the kind of human being who emerges at the end of history,” Fukuyama explains. And for Nietzsche the end of history was “basically liberal democracy, which achieves a state of prosperity and security”. And the trouble with that is that it’s deeply unsatisfying for people who aspire to be part of something greater than themselves. Who crave something “they’re willing to risk their lives on behalf of”.

As we trundle across London in our cab to save time, Fukuyama

admits there's a problem with the last five chapters of The End of History. In them he discusses the danger of boredom in a society that satisfies every need of its citizens, and forecasts that “the end of history will be a very sad time”. The problem with these chapters is that almost no one has read them. Instead, Fukuyama achieved sudden and dazzling intellectual stardom as the brain behind the triumphalist view that with western victory over Soviet Communism in the Cold War, humanity had surmounted all the big challenges of government and political philosophy. An idea that proved manifestly wrong.

Think Tiananmen Square, think Putin. Think Erdoğan, Orbán, Netanyahu, Trump.

The result has been constant questioning. Fukuyama says he's been invited almost daily for more than 30 years to change his mind. It started in the early 1990s with the authoritarian drift of Peru's Alberto Fujimori. "Basically, any time anything undemocratic happened in the world, somebody would write that my thesis had been disproved. Because they asserted that I was saying that everything would become democratic right away."

Which he wasn't. We reach the canal at Camden lock and start walking east along the towpath towards St Pancras. It hasn't been all bad, he says. Far from it. Success as an author meant success in academia and a new house with his wife (Laura Holmgren, a Soviet studies graduate) and their young children. "The other weird thing was that after the book's publication I was somehow regarded as a global guru who could talk about anything."

When he's got nothing to say he tries to change the subject. On Trump, it's different. Trump has split the American right – political territory where Fukuyama used to feel comfortable but no longer does. Trump embodies the anti-democratic tendencies that people who haven't read The End of History say disproves its thesis. But the reverse is true, Fukuyama says. Trump vindicates him. "I think a lot of the extremism that you see in the world despite the basic peace and prosperity of life in the year 2026 is a reflection of the fact that people want something more, on both the right and the left. I think a lot of our populist politics is driven by that sort of aspiration."

So all this craziness is the last man's Nietzschean desire for self-actualisation? “I think so.” Speaking of which, the towpath is narrow and joggers don't slow down. I hope our chosen route will be worth it.

"If you look at the people on the extreme right, the Maga right, in the United States, a lot of them young men... who don't really have anything in their lives that they're really ambitious for, they sit around trading memes online, playing video games and kind of imagining themselves in these heroic postures. And I think that's kind of the mentality that led to the January 6 uprising" – he means the riot that set out to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election.

Unlike many who watch the Trump circus slack-jawed or impotent with rage, Fukuyama isn't terribly bothered. He thinks the machinery of US democracy is still robust and that the great pendulum of public opinion will swing back in next month's midterms, possibly too far. "Republicans have a lot of reason to be pretty discouraged right now," he says. "They thought they were voting for a no-wars president and they got a war, they got high gas prices... and I think the

Photograph by Tom Pilston

Democrats are super-angry right now and they're going to turn out to vote. The danger is that they're so angry a lot of them are going to go for these Democratic Socialist types."

Polls bear him out. They show Democrats retaking the House and probably the Senate. But Fukuyama's confidence comes from taking a much longer view. He borrows from Alexandre Kojève, a 20th-century scholar of Hegel, the pleasingly maverick idea that the evolution of the fundamentals of political philosophy ended not in 1989 but in 1806, at the Battle of Jena, where Napoleon's victory over Prussia ensured the French Revolution would survive and the code Napoléon would take root in France.

'Republicans have a lot of reason to be pretty discouraged right now'

Kojève's basic idea was that “the ideals of the French Revolution about equality of dignity essentially remain foundational ideas that haven't really been challenged since then”, Fukuyama says. “Once the idea of universal recognition had gotten out it was very hard to stop despite all of the day-to-day setbacks and nonlinearities and so forth. And I think it's still helpful to retain a longer-term historical perspective because in the 1930s democracy looked like it was dead.”

No kidding. “Fascism and Stalinism and all of these competing political forms – it looked like they were going to overwhelm democracy and yet at the end of the [20th] century it’s still going pretty strong.”

By this time we should be walking under the west coast mainline as it emerges from Euston station and over the twin tunnels that are supposed to carry HS2 to Birmingham. To be honest it's not clear where we are, but I'd hoped to offer HS2 (about 10 years behind schedule, £60bn over budget) as an example of democracies' difficulties getting things done – a theme of Fukuyama's new book, In the Realm of the Last Man. He attributes these difficulties to what he calls the "vetocracy" – parliamentary systems that are enlightened in principle but feckless in practice because they accrete laws for decades on end and cannot bring themselves to abolish any. "This is true in the EU and it's true I think in the United States."

He mentions a fellow professor at Stanford using big data to catalogue all the rules and laws on every US statute book. "He can't do it. I mean he says that if you go down to a municipal level there's millions of rules [and] it gets to the point where virtually every executive action is so encased in procedure that decision-making just becomes very difficult.”

More by luck than anything, we swerve off the towpath as planned, cross the canal on

Camley Street and head south. This talk of accumulating laws reminds me of Michael Gove's central complaint about the EU, having had to include in UK law every piece of EU legislation that crossed his desk as minister of justice. It turns out Fukuyama knows Gove and will be seeing him later at a Spectator do.

Fukuyama fell in with America's leading neoconservatives in the 1980s and 1990s: “I felt that the United States in its DNA was kind of the patron of democratic systems around the world and needed to fulfil that role.” But he fell out with them in 2004 over the Iraq War and regrets taking so long about it.

We walk up a few stone steps into the haven of St Pancras Gardens: an old church and several peculiar monuments in deep shade. The trees somehow keep out the noise of the city as well as the sun.

Francis

Fukuyama on

the Regent's

Canal towpath in

Camden, north

London.

Fukuyama loves Bach, and his B minor mass in particular. Why Bach and not, for example, Beethoven or Mozart? “It’s a combination of things,” he says. “The counterpoint that he specialises in is just an extremely complex form of music, but he has such a sense for melody that it’s beautiful when you listen to it. And it’s this combination of intellectual underpinnings that are highly developed but also aesthetically very beautiful and pleasing. The other thing is that I don’t listen to Beethoven that much because it’s too emotional.”

An aversion to emotion. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised by his non-reaction to my big reveal. Johann Sebastian Bach never visited London but his youngest surviving son, Johann Christian, did. He settled there, composed music, spent prodigiously and died in debt in 1782. He was buried in St Pancras Gardens in a pauper's grave and there's a plaque to his memory at the foot of a large sundial. We find it and I explain the background. "Uh-huh," Fukuyama says. "I see."

In his spare time, besides listening to Bach, Fukuyama collects high-end audio equipment, builds computers and makes reproduction antique furniture for which he scours markets and the web for traditional woodworking tools. Is he a fan of the Ron Swanson character in Parks and Recreation, another dedicated carpenter? No, but he is a fan of the show. His favourite character is April (Aubrey Plaza).

En route to his next interview, at the BBC, I ask when he realised he was the smartest guy in the room. He takes it more as a compliment than a joke. “I guess most of the jobs I’ve held in my life are not ones I’ve sought but they were just handed to me. So I guess at a certain point you realise this stuff is just going to come to you without much effort on your part,” he says. His jobs in academia – jobs others would walk over hot coals for – “were just people saying, hey, how about coming to Stanford or how about being a professor in the first place.”

We reach Broadcasting House and the conversation returns to motorbikes. It turns out he's had not one but four accidents. "After the last one I decided at my age I shouldn't be riding one of these things." Yet he is. He has two Yamahas; a scooter and a bigger machine that'll do 80mph on the freeway. "It's just fun riding them," he says. And it's only reading back over a transcript of the interview that it occurs to me: here he is, Nietzsche's last man, satiated by success in a liberal democracy that doesn't ask its citizens to risk their lives, risking his life for the heck of it.

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‘Does that mean that when you burn cars, when you attack police officers, you get something?’

→ Paris students take to the streets, p36

India's ‘Cockroach’ rebels arrested as millions of voters struck from electoral roll

Founder Abhijeet Dipke is detained as his plane arrives in Delhi, stopping him joining a protest against Modi's voter verification drive. Gaurav Kumar reports from New Delhi

Indian police detained the leaders of the country's “Cockroach” party ahead of protests against a sweeping voter verification drive that has deprived millions of their right to vote.

Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), was seen being escorted off a plane by police after arriving in New Delhi yesterday. Two other leaders of the group, which began as online satire and has grown into a nationwide protest movement, were also detained, the CJP said.

Opposition parties have long accused the government of trying to manipulate voter eligibility to its advantage, but the verification drive has reignited fears that India's democracy is under threat.

“You can see where the nation is headed. They are here to arrest us directly from the flight,” Dipke said as he was led away.

“We are living under an absolute dictatorship,” said Arvind Kejriwal of the opposition Aam Aadmi party.

Dipke and the leaders of other opposition parties had called for peaceful protests in the Indian capital over the verification drive, demanding the resignation of election commission chief Gyanesh Kumar.

The commission, set up by prime minister Narendra Modi, has already removed around 130 million names from the electoral roll on the grounds that they are duplicates or have discrepancies in their information. That number includes a third of voters in the capital, Delhi, which was placed under lockdown yesterday before the planned protest.

The authorities deployed more than 20,000 police and security personnel, shut down mobile internet services, closed dozens of metro stations and barricaded roads to stop protesters reaching the Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century astronomical observatory that has become the country's most recognisable protest site.

Anger at the voter verification drive has become one of the biggest political controversies since Modi came to power in 2014. Opposition parties say the removal of so many voters directly benefited Modi's Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) in recent state elections. Muslim voters in particular, who are unlikely to vote for the BJP, appear to have been targeted.

In a country where poor record-keeping leaves many people struggling to produce documentation proving their citizenship, the verification drive means millions are effectively prevented from voting.

ple living under the same roof, the officials are applying different rules," said Parveen, 27, whose family lives in Jamia Nagar, a largely Muslim neighbourhood in south Delhi.

When officials asked Ayesha Parveen's family to prove they belonged on the voter list, they all gave the same address and handed in the same electricity bill. While her father and brother had old identity cards to show the officials, she and her mother supposedly lacked proper documentation in their own names. "For peo-

In most Indian homes, the bills and other documents are usually in a man's name, meaning the government's voter verification drive is hitting women especially hard. There are many reasons someone might get struck from the list, such as a parent's name being spelled differently. Some Indian people have been removed because the authorities believed they were dead; they are now trying to prove that they are still alive.

In Badarpur, near Jamia Nagar, Unita Sharma, 32, has been searching through files at her parents' house for proof she is who she says she is. She changed her surname when she married. "I don't know if I'll find the old voter record in time," she said.

In Sangam Vihar, Rajesh Kumar, 42, has been asked for documents from the past 10 to 15 years. However, some papers have been lost due to a house move. “If I don’t have the original,” he said, “is my identity just erased?”

For India's 200 million Muslims, the demand to prove citizenship has reopened recent wounds. In Mustafabad, in the north-east, Shabana Khan, 38, said many families had lost their papers when their homes were burned in the Hindu-Muslim riots of February 2020, in which 53 people were killed, most of them Muslims.

The disruption comes at a cost to would-be voters, too. Millions of Indians are effectively being forced to choose between sorting out their right to vote and going to work.

Pooja Verma, 28, from Munirka, said each trip to see the polling officers means she loses out on pay and has to stump up for travel costs. "Both our time and income are wasted," she said.

'If I don't have the original document, is my identity just erased?' Rajesh Kumar

Police arresting a supporter of the Cockroach Janata Party in New Delhi, above. Party founder Abhijeet Dipke, left.

Arun Sankar/AFP/ Getty Images

Lobster cages on Bailey Island in Maine. The industry has been hit hard by Trump's tariffs and the war in Iran.

Catherine Robotis/Universal Images Group via Getty

Trade wars take an axe to Republican hopes in Maine's logging country

Fuel costs and tariffs are causing pain in the rural north-east of the US – raising hope among Democrats ahead of the midterm elections next month

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson

Jackman, Maine

It's the start of another day's logging for Jamie Shelley, and first stop is the filling station. He needs a tank of diesel to run the heavy machinery he uses to fell trees in the woods of Maine, where the leaves are turning a kaleidoscope of autumnal reds.

Tourists flock to this north-eastern corner of the US, bordering Canada, to “leaf peep”, ride snowmobiles and shoot moose. But it is the logging industry that keeps the town of Jackman going, and 57-year-old Shelley is worried. He watches as the digits tick up on the pump. Diesel prices are the highest he has seen in his two decades.

"We've spent \$500 and we ain't left the yard yet," he says with a sigh, before heading out to the 15-acre plot he will work that day.

With three logging machines to run, Shelley's company now burns through \$3,000-worth of diesel a week – \$1,200 more than a year ago – as Donald Trump's war with Iran sends the cost of fuel to record highs. He is also facing increasing costs for parts and equipment as tariffs hit imports from Europe and Canada.

Source: RealClearPolitics

Trump's trade war with America's northern neighbour, just half an hour's drive from Jackman, has deepened the economic gloom on this side of the border.

"Our industry is already in trouble," said Shelley, citing cheap timber imports from Latin America and the closure of local mills. "Tariffs and fuel could be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

With midterm elections looming, the trade war threatens to backfire on Trump's Republican party in battlegrounds where the GOP is vulnerable. These battlegrounds include Maine, where Democrats hope to topple Susan Collins, the veteran Republican senator who has held the seat since 1997.

The White House is conscious of the impact of tariffs on states such as Maine, Michigan and Ohio, where many companies have operations on both sides of the border. Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, warned last month that the US could impose even tougher sanctions on Canada "if you interfere in our elections".

Troy Jackson at a Democrat campaign event in July this year.

Many in Jackman, including Shelley, voted to put Trump back in the White House in 2024. But with the president's approval rating at historic lows, Democrats hope the same voters are ready to punish the GOP for their financial troubles.

With a month to go, Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson holds a slender lead over Collins in most polls. A fifth-generation logger from Allagash, another rural community close to the border, Jackson tells of a tough childhood. Born to a 16-year-old mother who had barely enough money to get by, he worked in forestry for years before entering politics. Campaigning in worn-out denim and a faded baseball cap, the 58-year-old candidate offers a folksy charm and progressive policies on healthcare, tax and education.

“Tourism has been down for a couple years now,” he said. “Cross-border shopping has stopped. Parts are coming out of Canada, our products have to go to Canada, and this is devastating the economy. [People] will end up going bankrupt. They’ll end up losing their homes.”

Young families at the event seemed enthusiastic, but Jackson was not the candidate that Maine Democrats first wanted. For much of the past year, a charismatic Marine Corps veteran called Graham Platner was the Democrats' media darling.

Running on a blue-collar populist platform and promising to tackle the cost of living with taxes on oil companies and billionaires, Platner romped to victory in the June primary with 72% of the vote.

‘It costs \$1,000 to leave the wharf in the morning, and that’s before we’ve even caught a lobster’ Rick Moody, boat captain

But a sexual assault allegation wrecked Platner's campaign in July and forced Democrats into a hasty second primary. This Jackson won, but the acrimony surrounding Platner's exit has lingered.

With the Democrats in disarray, Collins has steadily crept up in the polls, even nosing ahead in a recent New York Times survey. A seasoned campaigner, she has positioned herself for three decades as a bipartisan centrist standing up for Mainers' interests in Washington. The last time Maine voted for a Republican president was George HW Bush in 1988, but even as the state grew bluer, Collins kept winning. In 2020, when Joe Biden won Maine by nine percentage points, Collins beat her Democrat opponent by a similar margin.

Collins has maintained a strategic

Republican incumbent Susan Collins has held the Senate seat for 29 years.

distance from Trump. At the candidates' first televised debate this week, Collins insisted she had "voted against my party more than any other senator on either side of the aisle". Jackson countered that on every vote that mattered, she had backed the Trump agenda.

Trump's trade war also featured prominently. Collins insisted she had been an “outspoken opponent of tariffs with Canada”, noting that she had secured exemptions for winter products such as road salt.

"We can't eat road salt," Jackson responded, observing that many Mainers cannot afford groceries.

At the fishing wharf in Harpswell on the Maine coast, another linchpin of the state economy is under pressure. Canada initially imposed tariffs on Maine's renowned seafood in September, but withdrew the levy after protests from industry groups.

Even so, lobster boat captain Rick Moody said the cost of fuel, bait and wire for his traps, has soared because of the Iran War and tariffs.

"It costs \$1,000 to leave the wharf, and that's before we've caught a lobster," said the 59-year-old. But he added that people shouldn't blame Collins for Trump's actions: "They can point fingers all they want, but she's got a 30-year record."

Back in Jackman, Shelley pointed out several logging companies that have gone out of business. Shelley himself has gone from 10 employees to one – his stepson Bruce – and now produces maple syrup on the side to help make ends meet.

Though he dislikes much of what Trump has done, Shelley sees Jackson as too far left and Collins “the least of the evils”. But he offered Democrats a scrap of hope for the 2028 presidential campaign.

"I'm not a Maga diehard," he shouted over the roar of Bruce piling logs. "If you gave me a commonsense person in the middle, you'd have me on board."

Trump throws diesel on fire of relations with Ukraine to woo back his base

Zelensky accuses the US president of ‘gifts to Putin’ after White House buys Russian oil before midterms, writes Hugh Tomlinson

Donald Trump said it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president” after Volodymyr Zelensky attacked his deal to buy diesel oil from Vladimir Putin.

In a furious exchange between Washington and Kyiv, Trump accused Zelensky of making “problems for the world” by refusing to halt attacks on Russian diesel refineries, hampering White House efforts to drive down fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections.

"I said to him, 'Do what you want. Don't hit refineries. There's plenty of targets... ' So what does he do? He goes and hits refineries... he'd better damn well stop," Trump told reporters yesterday. The president blamed Zelensky for prolonging the war and hurting the global economy.

Trump's comments came a day after he stunned Nato allies and enraged Ukraine by announcing that Russia would supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel to the US and global markets.

Trump has struck a deal to buy diesel oil from Vladimir Putin, undermining years of pressure on Russia to halt its war in Ukraine, as the White House tries to drive down fuel prices ahead of midterm elections.

In a social media post that infuriated Nato allies, Trump announced that Russia would immediately supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel to the US and global markets, with more to follow. Within minutes, his administration confirmed it had lifted sanctions on Russian oil, overturning pressure on Moscow to intended to starve it.

Trump's announcement is a bitter blow to Kyiv, which has pleaded with allies to increase the economic pressure on Moscow. In a furious statement, Zelensky condemned the deal as “absolutely terrible” and “not honest”, warning that “backroom deals” with Putin would only fund the Russian war machine. “Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilised world,” he said, calling Trump’s deal “an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged”.

Ukraine faces a brutal winter as its stocks of interceptor missiles run out and Moscow ramps up attacks on critical infrastructure and civilian targets. Yesterday a Russian missile strike in the south-east of the country killed 12 people, including three children.

Only last month, Trump signed a law imposing sweeping new sanctions on Russia. But the president is under growing pressure from voters over the soaring cost of fuel ahead of November's midterms as his unpopular war with Iran drags on. US diesel prices hit a record of \$6.53 a gallon last month, squeezing the farmers and truckers who are pivotal to Trump's core blue-collar support.

Trump's approval rating has plunged to historical lows in recent weeks. With his Republican Party facing disaster at next month's elections, the president has grasped Putin's offer in a bid to cut the cost of diesel and stave off a wipeout at the polls.

To bewildered US allies, the deal threatens another crisis for the transatlantic alliance as the Trump administration eyes closer strategic ties with Russia. Putin has tried repeatedly to cut Ukraine and Europe out of peace talks by dangling the prospect of lucrative bilateral business deals between Washington and Moscow.

Trump's social media post came amid another round of negotiations to broker a ceasefire. Senior officials from Ukraine and Europe were in Miami for talks with Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, when the president dropped his bombshell on Friday. The talks were promptly abandoned.

In a second statement released by Ukraine's embassy in Washington, Zelensky claimed that his negotiators had been “used as a smokescreen for the deal”, which he again criticised as “a weak decision by strong partners”.

Trump heaped praise on Putin as he left the White House for a rally on Friday. "This oil deal with Russia is a big deal. That is massive amounts of oil coming into our country, so I want to thank President Putin... This diesel is exactly what we need," he said.

Trump has been a vocal critic of other countries who buy oil from Moscow, accusing them of undermining his efforts to end the war. Addressing the UN general assembly last year, he lambasted China and India for buying Russian oil, but took aim at Nato allies still purchasing energy from Moscow. “They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that?” he said.

Unable to end the war with Iran and with the midterms looming, the president has cast about for ways to lower diesel prices. He has toyed with suspending petrol taxes and threatened to halt diesel exports to European allies if they do not release oil from their own reserves.

give Trump's opponents a platform to launch far-reaching investigations into the president, his inner circle and his business dealings in office. Democrats accused Trump of betraying the country by funding Putin's war to tip the polls in his favour.

Midterm elections are always a referendum on the sitting president and Republicans face a potential blood-bath next month, when control of Congress is up for grabs. Democrats are favoured to take back the majority in the House of Representatives and are confident of regaining control of the Senate. The impact of record diesel prices on key industries such as agriculture has put even deep red Republican strongholds in play. Races in rural states such as Iowa and Kansas, which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932, are now tied, a month before polling day.

“Trump is doing a deal with the devil to try to help his flailing political fortunes from the shockingly high diesel prices caused by his own reckless, illegal war in the Middle East,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer posted on X.

Donald Trump has done a deal to buy diesel oil from Vladimir Putin, above.

Andrew Caballero Reynolds/AFP, Getty

Control of both chambers would

Rescue workers help a family in a building hit by a Russian strike in Zaporizhzhia yesterday, top.

Kateryna Klochko/AP

“We went from sanctioning Russian oil to buying it in three weeks,” said California Democrat Adam Schiff. “Instead of ending his disastrous war in Iran, Trump is now funding Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

Trump made no effort to conceal his strategy in New York on Friday night. Touting the deal with Russia, Trump called on oil companies “to start dropping their prices right now... We’re getting them so much oil!”

Diesel prices did drop after Trump's announcement but experts question what impact the new Russian supply would have on the global supply crunch, even if Moscow can deliver it. The US alone burns close to 4m barrels of diesel a day. At that level, experts calculate that the 300,000 tonnes unveiled by Trump amounts to just 15 hours' supply across America.

To deflect criticism of the war with Iran, Trump has taken to blaming Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian refineries for the surge in diesel prices. The White House has pressured Kyiv to curb attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, even as the Kremlin has stepped up strikes on Ukraine's power stations.

One US official, speaking to Axios, said Trump had struck the deal with Putin because Zelensky had ignored repeated demands to curb attacks on Russian diesel plants. “Zelensky is misreading the room. By continuing to hit refineries, he is eroding the goodwill that he has built with Trump over the last six months,” the official said.

'Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilised world' Volodymyr Zelensky

Revolutionaries or vandals? The rioting teenagers who are dividing France

Isabel Coles Paris, France

Chaos on the

streets and

pressured

public finances

are giving

Macron one last

headache as

election looms

It was still dark when 17-year-old Fadi took up a position in front of the gates of his high school in Aubervilliers, a working-class suburb of Paris.

Classes at the Lycée Henri Wallon were not due to start for another hour, but the teenager had got there early to prevent them from going ahead. "As long as it's not blocked, we are not heard," he said.

The previous evening, the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, finally acknowledged that the anger of young people which has gripped France did not “come out of nowhere”. But his vague promise of solutions by the end of the month did not satisfy Fadi, nor the tens of thousands of other students across the country demanding more teachers and repairs to dilapidated school buildings.

"The government is hoping to buy time," Fadi said. "We are the new gen Z and we are all in this together."

First ignited at a secondary school in another Paris suburb last month, the protests have swept France, fuelled by social media. In some neighbourhoods of Paris, demonstrations have flared into full-scale riots and violent clashes with police.

The UN said it was watching “with concern” last week after the heavyhanded police response left a teenager blinded in one eye and another with a double jaw fracture. France's interior minister banned the use of stun grenades after another student's hand was blown off.

President Emmanuel Macron has largely sought to distance himself from the student protests. But with only six months left in office after a decade in power, he is facing converging crises that could further tarnish his legacy: chaos on the streets, mounting debt and an election that could bring the far right to power.

Many of the protesting students will still be too young to vote in the presidential election next April, but populist parties at both ends of the political spectrum are capitalising on the unrest. Marine Le Pen, the far-right politician who is leading in the polls, has dismissed the protesters as vandals and vowed to make them pay for damage. Leftwing presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, meanwhile, has hailed the students as modern-day revolutionaries.

Caught between the two, the centre-right government initially dismissed the protests as riots instigated by the far left, before striking a more conciliatory tone. Education minis-

Students, above, are sprayed with tear gas outside Sciences Po university, Paris, last week.

Left, protesters in Paris's Place de la République.

Thibault Camus/AP;

Véronique de Viguerie/

Getty

ter Édouard Geffray this week said he would deploy 3,000 substitute teachers to address staff shortages, drawing accusations from the right that the government was legitimising violence.

“Does that mean, when you burn cars, when you attack police officers, you get something?” said Laurent Jacobelli, a spokesman for Le Pen.

An online government platform asking for student complaints received 67,000 submissions within days of being launched this week. The top issue raised so is school timetables, which can stretch from 8am to 6pm. Students have complained about sweltering classrooms in the summer heatwave and are critical of Parcoursup, the online platform they use to apply for higher education.

As students arrived at Henri Wallon, a banner was attached to the railings and placards went up. “Thirty-five students = one teacher. One student = 35 riot police,” read one cardboard sign, contrasting the shortage of high school teachers with the numbers of police deployed to quell protests.

Another read: “We are missing our lessons to teach you one.”

“Next year we have the start of our exams. If we lack good conditions and teachers it will backfire on us,” said Imane, 15. Students in suburbs like Aubervilliers face greater disadvantages than those in the more prosperous centre, she said. “If you compare with central Paris high schoolers, we have much less means to study. In the suburbs we are considered scum.”

The students were joined by many of their teachers. Ten years ago there were 17 students per class, said physics and chemistry teacher Alex Foulquier. Now there are up to 35. “As a result, exam results are going down.”

Emma Dageville, who teaches social and economic sciences, said anger over school conditions masks deeper concerns among the current generation of students. "What they are protesting about is actually their own place in society and the future they can aspire to," she said. "They are questioning the way society is organised – and that's why the government is repressing it with such force."

Far-right politicians around the world have seized on the scenes of violence as evidence of the consequences of mass migration in Europe. "This isn't about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!" Donald Trump posted on social media.

The French government's scope for addressing the grievances of students is increasingly constrained by the financial markets, as doubts about France's ability to rein in spending have driven bond yields to a 25-year high. Eurozone finance ministers last week urged Paris to pass its 2027 budget to calm bond markets and curb the country's ballooning deficit.

The government aims to reduce the deficit to 5% of GDP with €43bn in spending cuts and other measures. Plans to raise the retirement age to 64 – a flagship reform of Macron – were suspended until after the election in the teeth of opposition from left and right. Both Le Pen and Mélenchon have pledged to lower the retirement age, even as the burden of France's pension outlays has led to cutbacks in other spending, including education.

“France is effectively handing over large subsidies to older French at the expense of everyone else,” Paul Krugman, an American Nobel Prize-winning economist wrote on Substack.

University students and trade unions joined the protests last week as the movement gathered pace. On the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris, several hundred students gathered after police dispersed a sit-in outside the elite Sciences Po university on Wednesday morning. Some had swimming goggles round their necks to protect their eyes against tear gas.

"The police are getting more and more violent," said a 21-year-old student wearing Converse shoes and chipped black nail polish. More than 6,800 people – $86\%$ of them minors – have been detained since the protests began in mid-September, according to the ministry of justice.

The next day, tens of thousands of school students converged for a march on Place de la Bastille. There were chants against Le Pen's Rassemblement National and in support of Gaza. Among the placards were flags of Mélenchon's La France Insoumise, who later declared the Bastille had been retaken. Police broke up the protest using water cannon and anti-riot strobe shields.

'Next year we have the start of our exams. If we lack good conditions and teachers, it will backfire on us' Imane, 15, student

More demonstrations are planned this week. The number of high schools closed fell to 141 on Friday, according to the ministry of education. The government is counting on one thing to stifle the movement: the upcoming half-term holiday.

Iranian civilians prepare for ground war in call-up by regime's hated militia

‘Devoted to Iran’ campaign is training men and women alongside paramilitaries used to crush civil unrest

Haroon Janjua

Iranian women train with the Basij militia in Tehran, below.

Icana/Zuma Press/Avalon

For the past two weeks Fatima, an Iranian university student, has been learning to fire a gun, administer first aid and respond to emergencies, as Tehran steps up a campaign to prepare civilians for war.

“This is my country. If Iran is attacked, I want to defend it myself,” she says. “I want to know how I can help, whether that’s protecting my family, helping my neighbourhood or, if necessary, picking up a weapon. I want to fight the enemies of Iran.”

Fatima, 22, has joined Janfada-ye Iran, or “Devoted to Iran”, a new civil mobilisation campaign backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its volunteer paramilitary force, the Basij.

As war with the US drags on, triggering economic meltdown inside Iran, the regime has sought new ways to placate its impoverished and restless population. Iran's top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, admitted last week that the country faces “among the most difficult periods” in its history, as the US tightens sanctions and a naval blockade on the Gulf.

Donald Trump is threatening to resume attacks on Iran after November's midterm elections. The new Janfada campaign allows volunteers to earn extra money, while building a culture of resistance and cementing loyalty to the regime.

Last month, organisers announced military and emergency training for Janfada volunteers. Officials say they plan to establish 1,000 resistance battalions across the country.

A Janfada centre has opened in Tehran, offering courses in security, surveillance, marksmanship and weapons handling, training women alongside men. Photographs released by state news agencies showed women taking part in military drills.

stand that you can't always count on someone else to protect you."

"I had never handled a gun. I never imagined I might one day need to use a weapon," says Fatima, using a false name. "But I'm beginning to under-

Another recruit, Zahra, said her family was worried about her joining the militia but accepted her decision.

“Defending Iran isn’t the same as agreeing with everything the government does. I have my own opinions. Still, I believe my country deserves defending,” she says. “My decision is about my children. If something happens to Iran, I want to protect them.”

But for many Iranians, joining the Basij is intensely controversial. The militia is widely hated as a tool of repression rather than a noble defender of the nation. Backed by the Revolutionary Guard, it has been used to crush civil unrest and political dissent. Its troops were deployed to stamp out the 2009 “green movement” protests, demonstrations over the economic crisis in 2019 and the “woman, life, freedom” uprising in 2022 that demanded an end to compulsory hijab rules and greater rights for Iranian women.

This year the Basij led the regime's ruthless suppression of mass protests that engulfed Iran. Thousands were killed as security forces opened fire on civilians. Many more were arrested, tortured and executed.

"The scale of the violence was something we had not witnessed in Iran in recent history," said Hamed, a student from Tehran, who is also using a pseudonym. "We have not forgotten their brutality or the way they crushed people on the streets."

For many Iranians, Hamed adds, the word “Basij” is synonymous with repression and violence.

For Fatemeh Aman, an Iran expert, the Janfada is an attempt to restore the patriotic role the Basij had in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. “Clearly there is a military rationale for expanding the pool of civilians who can be mobilised in an emergency, but it also gives the Basij an opportunity to present itself differently,” Aman says. “For many Iranians, the Basij is associated less with national defence than with domestic repression. Janfada allows the organisation to emphasise patriotism, national defence and public service instead.”

But some Iranians suspect the scheme betrays the government's fear of unrest as the economic crisis deepens. Inflation has rocketed as the value of Iran's currency, the rial, has collapsed. The US naval blockade has shut off Iranian oil exports, triggering a fuel crisis and closing off the regime's chief source of revenue.

Some Iranians have announced on social media that they have quit their jobs because their salary is no longer enough to live on.

“There is no way to make ends meet any more,” said a driver in Isfahan who gave his name as Reza.

“Everything has become expensive. Saving or planning for the future is impossible. Ordinary Iranian people can only bear this up to a point... This is not sustainable.”

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Hitchcock's spies didn't come any cooler than the great Eva Marie Saint

Erica Wagner, page 42

Zack Polanski's confection of eggy foam trapped in warm air has fallen flat Andrew Rawnsley

The Green party leader's ambitions have been dashed by a byelection defeat and a series of fatal misjudgments

H

Lubris is often the midwife of nemesis. It was at his first party conference as leader a year ago that Zack Polanski boasted that the Greens would supplant Labour as the primary party of the left. This excited his followers, but sounded rather vainglorious to more sober observers. That claim now looks as delusional as that of someone who has been at the magic mushrooms.

The bellyflop in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, where Labour comfortably held the seat vacated by Sir Keir Starmer, is a significant setback. Jonathan Bartley, who used to be the party's co-leader, is right to say that there is “toxicity” around the Greens and they must now do “some serious soul-searching”. They need to take a long, hard look at their organisation, their policies and their discredited leader.

I hear apologists offering alibis for the performance. A safe Labour seat... increased our vote... mumble... mumble... excuse... excuse. Truth to tell, they embarked on the byelection campaign thinking it was game on. Mr Polanski was in it to win it, not to come a distant second. Serious people agreed that the Greens ought to have been highly competitive in an inner-London seat with a relatively youthful and diverse population and lots of graduates. Peter Kellner, the veteran psephologist, has pointed out that it was precisely the kind of seat where Labour, when in government, has historically lost to a rival attacking from the left.

So what went wrong for the Greens? It might be better to start by asking what went right for Labour. While the party steadily bled support when Sir Keir was at the helm, Andy Burnham is enticing erstwhile deserters back. He's partly done that by hardening criticism of Israel's merciless treatment of Gaza and stiffening the government's opposition to settlements on the West Bank. The relentless emphasis on the cost of living also seems to be helping. So does the simple but key point that Mr Burnham is a much more adept political operator and communicator than his predecessor.

The backlash against the government which propelled Hannah Spencer, the Greens' plucky plumber, to triumph in Gorton and Denton in February has dissipated. Victory in Holborn and St Pancras

'His obsessive social media output has got him into repeated trouble.' Abdullah Bailey/LNP

for Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden council, who fought a shrewd campaign, is a boost for the prime minister. At his own byelection in Makerfield, Mr Burnham saw off Reform. At this byelection, Labour countered the threat on its other flank. This result confirms that the “Burnham bounce” is for real. The prime minister’s team are congratulating themselves that their project to rebuild a progressive coalition around Labour seems to be on track.

The byelection was not just a tribute to Labour rediscovering how to win. It was also an illustration of just how miserably the Greens have wilted. The Green bubble was starting to deflate even before Labour switched leaders and this reversal in fortunes has a great deal to do with Mr Polanski himself. He initially prospered because he was a punchy and provocative performer offering Corbynesque eat-the-rich economic populism with clear appeal to a chunk of voters, especially younger ones struggling to get by.

Like Reform, the Greens have offered themselves as the instrument of rebellion against the status quo. Like with Reform, the wheels have started to come off their bandwagon in recent months. As the novelty of Mr Polanski has faded and his flaws have come into clearer view, the former thespian and sometime hypnotherapist has begun to look like a hollow act. His obsessive social media output has got him into repeated

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trouble and his messages on the cost of living have been drowned out by convulsions over his party's attitude to Israel and antisemitism.

The Greens are an unstable coalition of middle-class planet-loving environmentalists, pro-Palestinian activists and ultra-left militants who have migrated from Labour and elsewhere. This came to a head with the adoption at their annual conference of a policy which equates Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state, with racism. The conference also rejected a two-state solution to the conflict in the region and called for a single Palestinian state “throughout historic Palestine”, which would mean erasing Israel, home to roughly half of the world’s Jews, from the map. That position is more extreme than the one held by the Palestinian Authority. The policy has been condemned by the European Green group, the continent-wide association to which our Greens are affiliated.

our of the party's five MPs vainly pleaded with their party not to adopt this stance. I've heard Ellie Chowns, the Greens' leader in the Commons, suggest that the conference is not representative of the wider membership. Let's assume this is true. What does it say about the health of the party's internal democracy and its vulnerability to entryism by ultra-leftists if its conference can adopt an extreme policy that is not supported by most of its members?

This episode also exposed Mr Polanski's dismal failings as a “leader”. I use the quote marks because the brave crusader displayed zero leadership, absenting himself from the conference debate and pathetically refusing to offer a view on whether that policy should be adopted. You can’t call yourself a leader and then make off like a submarine when your party is dividing over such an incendiary issue. He says he intends to remain as leader, but the tortured statements he’s made since he lost the byelection have done nothing to restore confidence in him. His approval ratings have plummeted to the point where some polling has him more disliked among the public than even Nigel Farage. Far from becoming the main party of the left, the Opinium poll we publish today has the Greens shrivelling to nine points, a full 20 behind Labour.

Recovery is possible. Mr Burnham is currently getting some credit for trying to make people's lives better, but they'll get disillusioned if the government doesn't deliver. That might offer a second chance to the Greens, but they'll need to be much more convincingly led. Mr Polanski has been defeated in a seat he ought to have been able to win. He has been revealed as a confection composed of eggy foam and trapped warm air. He has now fallen flat. In politics, as in the kitchen, a soufflé can only rise once.

As an atheist, I agree with the Pope: AI can never have the ‘human spark’ Kenan Malik

Pope Leo

XIV signs his

'Magnifica

humanitas'

encyclical on

'safeguarding

the human

person in the

age of artificial

intelligence'.

Vatican Pool/Getty

Images

don't believe in God. I disagree with many Catholic doctrines. I welcome the social promise of AI. Yet, I side more with the Pope than with Silicon Valley plutocrats in

Silicon Valley plutocrats in their ongoing debate over the nature of AI.

In May, the Pope published Magnifica Humanitas, an encyclical on “safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence”. “So-called artificial intelligences,” he argued, “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” Nor “do they have a moral conscience”.

More recently, he generated debate by insisting on an “ontological difference” between human and machine-created art, adding that “algorithms lack the spark of humanity”.

Meanwhile, Anthropic, a leading AI company, and the creator of the chatbot Claude, has been holding meetings with religious leaders both to convince them that Claude could be conscious and moral and to seek advice on the algorithms necessary “to get Claude to see itself as a virtuous actor”.

Many religions have a register of prescribed rules, such as the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. Values, though, cannot be distilled from, or into, a simple list or algorithm. They develop over time, organically, untidily and often in contradictory fashion, within specific communities and traditions.

In the past, in Europe, thousands of witches were burned and millions of people enslaved because Christians believed that God had sanctified such practices. Today, few would accept that. God has not changed his mind. Humans have, through historical change and social development. The same is true of the changing beliefs of Muslims and Jews, Hindus and atheists.

Morality matters to humans because we face real issues in the real world, from poverty to racism, from sexual assaults to unjust wars. Such experiences shape the way we view ourselves and the world, and define the values we think necessary to better both. AI possesses no such experience. Turning an abstract set of rules into an algorithm does not make Claude moral but exposes it as a kind of entity for which being moral makes little sense.

The guardrails necessary to ensure that AI systems do not act in harmful or destructive ways are not the equivalent of human moral norms. Rather, they are imposed to constrain the actions of a machine that cannot be moral.

Some tech leaders have pushed back against the attempt to confer consciousness and personhood on machines. “Controlling something that believes it may be conscious – that it’s entitled to our welfare and has rights of its own – may well be impossible,” wrote Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.

The problem, though, runs deeper. The emergence of digital computers in the postwar years created a new metaphor for the process of thinking. Over time, the metaphor turned into an explanation. The “computational theory of mind” views the human mind itself as a computational

system. If carbon-based computers could not only think but be conscious and moral, show love and anger, joy and fear, many argued, why not silicon-based computers, too?

The computational theory of mind became the dominant view in scientific thinking about brain operation. Many scientists are now questioning it.

One key problem is that in humans, unlike in computers, we cannot neatly separate “hardware” from “software”. With human brains, the neuroscientist Anil Seth observes, it is “likely impossible to separate what they do from what they are”. The biological structure of the brain is central to cognition. Humans are embodied beings, and our embodiment, our existence as evolved physical beings, is central to the way we think, our

---

Meaning is everything. When we communicate, we communicate meaning

sense of self and our capacity to be conscious. Non-biological machines are unlikely to develop such dimensions.

Humans are also beings that live in time. For a digital computer, only sequence matters: two steps in an algorithm could be separated by a second or a millennium, and it would matter little to the computation. For humans, the smooth flow of time is intrinsic to our experience of the world. Consciousness that stutters like a broken film reel would not be consciousness at all.

Then there is the question of meaning. A computer manipulates symbols. Its program specifies a set of rules or algorithms to transform one string of symbols into another. But it does not specify what those symbols mean. To a computer, meaning is irrelevant.

Humans also manipulate symbols in thinking and talking, reading and writing. For humans, though, meaning is everything. When we communicate, we communicate meaning. What matters is not just the outside of a string of symbols but its inside too, not just the syntax but the semantics.

Meaning comes through our existence as social beings. I make sense of the world insofar as I live in a community of other thinking, feeling, talking beings. Social interaction shapes the content – inserts the insides, if you like – of the symbols in our heads.

To ask, “Is Claude conscious?” is both to anthropomorphise computers and to mechanise humans. As the philosopher of technology Shannon Vallor has observed, despite apocalyptic warnings of AI making humans extinct, “what AI puts in greatest jeopardy is not our species’ bare survival, but our self-understanding”.

Pope Leo is right to celebrate “the human spark”. That spark does not derive from the divine. It emerges through human evolution and history, from our existence as biological beings capable of creating beauty and wonder, ugliness and pain, acting as agents that can transform ourselves and the world, for better and worse.

Dear Keir\*

Hullo Britain. Bet you didn't expect to hear from me again! Last time the K-man graced these pages, I was prime minister of the United Kingdom. Now I'm not even an MP. As the young people say, life comes at you fast. (They also say things I'm less keen on, like "Free Palestine" and "I hate Keir Starmer".)

On 1 September, I stepped down as MP for Holborn and St Pancras. Yes, I had promised to serve out my term, but that's one broken promise in 11 years of politics. Not too shabby! In last Thursday's byelection, my ally Sagal Abdi-Wali poleaxed Polanski. Sagal came to this country as a refugee, which I think is brilliant now I don't have to pander to Reform.

So there you have it: my political career is dead and buried, and the headstone reads “Here lies Sir

Keir Starmer MP. His dad was a toolmaker". To mark the occasion, The Observer has commissioned a valedictory Dear Keir. Like some grizzled hitman in a Hollywood film, I'm back for one last job. Let's get to your emails!

Alright, our kid? I was just jogging, listening to New Order and the Smiths, and I thought, go on, drop Keir a line. Any advice for your successor? "What not to do" sort of thing.

Andy, Makerfield

I have nothing to say to you, you Manc-Scouse Judas.

Dear Keir, my job – which I thought would take me up to retirement – has come to an abrupt end. How do I figure out my next steps?

Marina, Alvechurch

It's a funny thing, Marina, but your question is relevant to my own situation. You see, I expected to be in Downing Street until a ripe old age. Instead, I was ousted by my party, just because of my catastrophic poll ratings. And my defence secretary going AWOL. And Mandelson, freebiegate, winter fuel, Gaza, local elections – the list goes on.

Point is, I need a new gig, something that plays to my (very real) strengths. When I was PM, everyone agreed I was a dab hand at diplomacy, and not just because they wanted me out of the country. So I'm looking to work in the foreign policy sphere. Ideally, the role would involve my favourite

I provided representation for a group too often ignored: the boring community

Grown-up advice from everyone's favourite centrist

things: wearing a suit, making solemn pronouncements and shaking hands with important men on tarmacs. The occasional trip to Davos wouldn't hurt, either.

Whatever your Davos is, you should pursue it. Follow your bliss, whether that means finally writing that novel, or lobbying to become secretary general of Nato.

---

Dear Keir, was it worth it? Lucien, Ealing

I don't have a single regret. In fact, I'm proud. It takes some PMs – Thatcher or Blair, for instance – a decade to achieve what they want. I managed in just over two years. I brought down immigration, did Ukraine stuff and was forced into lifting the two-child benefit cap.

Most importantly, I provided representation for a group too often ignored: the boring community. If one nasal, grey-haired child saw me and thought “I could be a swiftly-deposed prime minister”, then it was all worthwhile.

Right, I'd better sign off – for good this time. Let me leave you with one last piece of advice: things are rarely as bad as they seem. For instance, my political career. I've been called the worst-ever Labour PM, but perhaps historians will be kind.

Perhaps they'll say “that Keir Starmer was a decent bloke. He may not have fixed Britain, but he gave us the tools to do so. In that sense, he was the greatest toolmaker of all.”

Yours concludingly,

\*As told to Lucien Young

RIDDELL

11·10·26

Create a universal bank of Mum and Dad Will Hutton

The value of all Britain's homes is now estimated at around £9.2tn. Inheritance tax revenues in the last financial year

were less than 0.01% of that total at £8.4bn – not even the tiniest of tiny pinpricks. Yet one of the triumphs of Britain's right is to have inflamed that pinprick into an imagined giant sore – an alleged enemy of aspiration and enterprise, haunting millions of homeowners worried the nest egg they want to pass to their children will be taxed out of existence.

To Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, it has seemed a godsend. Attempting to enlarge her shrunken party she declared at last week's conference that no family home will be subject to inheritance tax, which the vast majority never were anyway. It was a naked appeal to win back votes in London's rich outer suburbs. Aspiration and enterprise must not be endangered, she insisted in a copy-cat echo of the American right, by the state coercively asserting its right to tax an individual's assets accumulated over their lives yet again on their death, diminishing what might otherwise go to their family.

She is oblivious to the reality that this pernicious inheritance tax is so poorly designed in taxing wealth that Britain holds the number two spot in the wealth inequality rankings among OECD industrialised countries.

If Badenoch ever wins power, this ugly stain on our society will grow uglier, accelerating the immense amount of wealth moving to those lucky enough to have thrown one of life's double sixes – being born to rich parents. Already a 35-year-old adult is three times more likely to be a homeowner if their parents are homeowners, being more likely to benefit from an advance to pay the deposit via the bank of Mum and Dad than unluckier and poorer peers. "Straight-talking" Kemi may have won plaudits for her assault on racism – but, simultaneously, she has been given a free pass to make Britain even unfairer.

Nor is it obvious the politics will work. She and her small band of followers believe that human beings' sole preoccupation is money and their progeny – and the devil take everyone else. But we humans are more complex. Social psychologists have long observed that in controlled, experimental games adults have a strong sense of distributive justice, so that failure or success in distributing resources equally has an observable impact on the brain's circuitry – we react

badly to unfairness. Research has extended the insight to babies. There is a 15-month “milestone” at which babies react badly if food is divided unfairly in, say, a proportion of 3:1 rather than 2:2.

We humans carry an embedded proclivity to want fairness. The universally held expectation is that we, and those with whom we interact, should follow the golden rule: that we do as we would be done by. Living in Badenoch's Britain will traduce that rule – and millions of the less well-off will rightly object.

There is an even stronger reaction to the impact of undeserved good and bad luck. The moral philosopher Ronald Dworkin developed the concept of brute luck – how some life events, such as the wealth of your parents, are outside your control. It is brute luck to whom you are born, and any attempt to justify the consequent poverty or wealth as deserved is palpably absurd. This is what compelled the great American philosopher John Rawls to invent the “veil of ignorance” test. A good society is one where, even if the unborn baby could choose his or her parents, it would be pointless because everyone’s life chances would be the same.

The entrepreneurs and young company founders on whom our economic future depends as tribunes of “enterprise” believe in the golden rule too, and manage their companies respecting its precepts.

Researching the strengths of Britain's under-recognised innovation economy over the past two years, I have never encountered a founder who has raised the threat of inheritance tax on the family home as constraining their ambitions.

What drives them, which I find inspiring, is, rather, the desire to build a great company embodying

---

A fairer society is within our grasp, as is a stronger tax base

a distinctive technology that will make the world better. Along the way, they certainly expect to make some useful money – but as a consequence of their broader purpose. Money is not the purpose of the 100-hour weeks they work – nor is their over-riding purpose to create a dynastic property empire to be enjoyed by their descendants.

None of this intrudes into Badenoch's worldview, in thrall to primitive appeals to aspiration. A far more politically adept and fairer approach is to recognise that capital and assets in Britain are incredibly lightly taxed and should fairly contribute more to our tax base.

The task is to devise a system of doing that more efficiently than exemption-riddled inheritance tax. For example, there should be a tax on gifts received over all one's life, not just on bequests on death. You would be permitted, say, £3k of tax-free gifts each year and enjoy a lifetime tax-free allowance of £150k for all larger gifts, but then tax would be levied at varying rates depending on the size of the gift. No more gifting assets seven years before death to escape inheritance tax. It would increase receipts from gifts of capital by some £10bn a year. Part could be earmarked so that every young person, say at the age of 21, gets access to a pot of capital whatever their parents' circumstances, which so transforms life chances. It would universalise the bank of Mum and Dad.

A fairer society is within our grasp, as is a stronger tax base to satisfy both the bond markets and the demands for better public services. It won't be achieved by reheating the exploded nostrums of Lady Thatcher – or the intellectually bankrupt American Republican party. We strike out true to ourselves and our humanity.

Notebook

Raise a glass to Eva Marie Saint, Hitchcock's coolest and savviest spy Erica Wagner

T here are three perfect movies in the world. (Fight me.) They are, in no order, Singin' in the Rain (1952, directed and

choreographed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly), The Wizard of Oz (1939, directed by Victor Fleming) and – at the very top of my personal pantheon – North by Northwest. Forget Psycho and Vertigo, this tricky 1959 thriller marks the apogee of Hitchcock's work: and among its many joys is the performance of Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall – the glamorous, savvy spy who is more than a match for Cary Grant's Roger O ("What does the 'O' stand for?" "Nothing") Thornhill. Eva Marie Saint left us this week, aged 102, but her cinematic legacy is indelible. She won an Oscar for her debut performance in On the Waterfront (1955); she kept her film career on a low boil to raise her family, but memorably returned to television, playing Cybill Shepherd's mother on Moonlighting in the late 1980s. But – oh Eva Marie, oh Eve. In North by Northwest, this Hitchcock blond tips the porter on the 20th Century Limited \$5 so Roger-on-the-run will be seated at her table in the dining car; she's a woman who makes the running and it is a dazzling, seductive performance. One of the best nights of my life was spent at the English National Opera just a few years ago, listening to a live orchestra play Bernard Hermann's stunning score while the film was screened. Much to the audience's surprise and delight, Saint – then in her late 90s – had recorded a

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, the Wizard of Oz and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.

short film as introduction: she was as beautiful, self-possessed and smart as ever. Raise a Gibson in her honour, my friends.

Perfect is a high bar, I know: there's nothing wrong with simply excellent – and excellent indeed is Antonin

Baudry's two-part biopic De Gaulle. Aside from anything else, if you were as disappointed as I was by the Odyssey, this will restore your faith that an action film with a real moral heart can indeed be made, and can keep you on the edge of

your seat for nigh on six hours. For the full Francophile experience, we took it in at the Ciné Lumière at the Institut Français in London's South Kensington – très chic. Simon Abkarian turns in an incredible performance as De Gaulle, unafraid to give a tinge of Clouseau to this French hero's astonishing self-belief. Simon Russell Beale is hands-down the best onscreen Churchill

Young people barricading their lycées have flocked to De Gaulle, and no wonder

I've ever seen, even if I have a sneaking feeling that his French really wasn't quite so good as all that. Like Pressure, Anthony Maras' film starring Andrew Scott as D-Day meteorologist James Stagg, Baudry's gripping epic gives us a singular hero who sticks unwaveringly, and at great personal cost, to ideals that will benefit a better world of the future. Pressure has been a sleeper hit; and the same young people of France who are barricading their lycées have flocked to De Gaulle, and no wonder. We all want something to believe in, as well as a delicious

My son's wedding was so different from mine. Phew!

Back then, parents took over the big day. Happily, the young are now in charge, says Melanie Reid

If you got married in the 1980s, chances are your parents not only paid for the wedding, but also organised the whole thing. They invited aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, a neighbour or two and the boss they wanted to impress. After that, you got to ask a few mates.

Perhaps the wedding that started this sense of generational ownership was that of Princess Diana, when the poor girl must have looked around at the assorted grandees, creaking aristos and third cousins from Schleswig-Holstein filling St Paul's and thought, "Who in heaven's name are all these people?"

On the morning of my first wedding in 1982, I remember driving to a nearby station to pick up an antique cousin of my mother's, one I'd never met. "But what does she look like?" I asked despairingly. "Oh, you'll know her when you see her, dear," my mother said.

Chances are that if you got married in the 1980s you might well, in the 2020s, be seeing your children do the same thing. What you will learn is how much the game has changed. Culturally, weddings have turned on their head.

All this occurred to me as I watched my son and his bride celebrate their wedding in France last month: a sea of young people, free and joyous, celebrating in the dappled sunlight while a handful of oldies watched from the sidelines. It was a blissfully happy occasion.

Among the guests at my wedding, our parents were far more likely to know our friends than we were to

even recognise theirs. Here it was the opposite: 90% of the guests were young people I had never met. But plainly everyone loved the bride and groom. The stage belonged to the young – exactly the way it should be.

The revolution in marriage has been profound. Ownership of the ceremony has swapped sides. Power has passed to the young, much as the religious and cultural importance of vows has withered. Only one tradition hasn't entirely changed, and that's the question of who pays. Young people today often choose to fund their own weddings, although parents are still welcome to contribute. For those who do want to help, they'll discover it's a bit like paying tax: they must hand it over unhypothecated and the Treasury does what it wants with it.

Of course one tries. "Put it towards a house deposit, not the wedding," my inner Gradgrind muttered as I clicked on the bank transfer. But it wasn't up to me to dictate anything, nor would I dream of doing so. It was their party.

Millennials don't get married for sex, status, security, dynasty or political alliance; they do so for love and fun... and to a certain extent for Instagram. “Married well” has a different meaning now. And because they're doing it a decade older than we did, and because some have money, the stars of the show have claimed the right to organise it.

As befits the generation who grew up watching Friends after school, they just want that extravagant party with their mates. Parents are invited, and a couple of other oldies – kind of because they have to be – but the long weekend belongs to the young.

My son's wedding was a carnival of energy and love. From the sidelines it was also a poignant experience; even as you feel happy bowl of soupe à l'oignon, which you can find at Gazette, the institute's excellent brasserie. Once again: santé!

I've had happy times, too, in recent weeks at Soho Place, handily close to The Observer's London offices. First there was Phelim McDermott's Tao of Glass, which might have been about the director's relationship with Philip Glass, or about the glass table he loved and lost, but was certainly original, imaginative and life-and-art affirming. Next came Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starring Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup as the famously feuding George and Martha. (Side note: if you love James Marshall's brilliant children's series of George and Martha books, the Albee play gets an extra frisson of abrasive horror.) Anderson has been in the news for asking the superfans who hang out by the stage door to cool it: "You can't come 20 times and sit in the front row, it'll drive me mad." I'm not surprised: her performance is wild and powerful, and for some of it she crawls along the circular edge of the stage, inches from the front row. This is when a parasocial relationship can edge too close to being properly social. When I spoke to Anderson not so long ago – she was still in rehearsals for the play

– I asked her if she missed theatre when she didn't do it. Her answer was nicely brusque: "If I missed it, I'd do it more, but I feel like it's almost like childbirth: it's too hard. You don't want to do it too often." Amen.

for your child, it's impossible not to mourn your own lost youth.

Poignant, too, is the ache that decrees this is the order of things. You have done your job. You must let go of your status as mother. You're not No 1 any more. You're No 2, and that's how it should be.

If your child is surrounded by friends having a riot, then well done you. Be happy you've enabled them to step into life with confidence and freedom, and you haven't strangled them with possessive love. You haven't created a Norman Bates.

As I watched my son, those lines of the poet Mary Oliver resonated: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" I can at least tell you how my son and his wife started it. By going on a friendimoon, as opposed to a honeymoon. Seventeen of them, including the bride and groom.

What fabulous fun.

Letters

Weight-loss drugs should not be sold like fast fashion. Patients deserve better

GLP-1 medicines are revolutionising obesity treatment. As a pharmacist, educator and public health policy researcher, I welcome their potential. UCL research suggests nearly one in 10 adults in Great Britain have used weight-loss medicines or are interested. Among those currently taking GLP-1s for weight loss, 95% access them privately.

GLP-1s reshape core metabolic, neurological and physiological pathways, and require careful prescribing and ongoing monitoring. It is illegal to advertise prescription-only medicines in the UK. The loophole is to promote weight-loss services instead. Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Marine Saint's investigation ("Slim now, pay later: online pharmacies promote sales of new diet drugs despite ad ban", News, 4 October) exposes the mismatch between clinical seriousness and the sales tactics used to promote them. Prescription medicines should not be marketed like fast fashion. Loyalty points, countdown offers and buy now, pay later schemes import retail psychology into clinical care.

Patients are not medicines experts, nor should they have to be. Clinicians must advise on benefits, risks, alternatives and duration that must be independent of sales pressure. A consultation should determine the right treatment for the right patient, not complete a sale.

Starting GLP-1 treatment can mean a long-term clinical and financial commitment. Obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease, and a 2026 BMJ meta-analysis found rapid weight regain after treatment stopped; with weight projected to return towards baseline around 1.5 years after discontinuing newer

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Regulated sunbeds are not social-media trends

Your article on sunbeds unfairly conflates viral social media trends with the UK's regulated indoor tanning sector (“Social media draws the young back to the sunbed – and the cancer ward”, News, 27 September).

As chairman of The Sunbed Association and a member of the British Standards Committee working on salon safety, I believe this debate should be based on evidence and an accurate understanding of professional salons.

Responsible salons do not promote “sunburn challenges”, extreme tanning or unregulated products. They operate within established safety requirements, including BS EN 60335-2-27.

The Sunbed Association provided detailed information when approached for comment, yet this was not reflected in the article. We share the aim of preventing sunburn, increin therapies. Not everyone will need lifelong treatment, but maintaining weight loss may require years of treatment and recurring private costs. The long-term financial commitment should be as visible as the introductory price. “Buy now, pay later” promotions change how that commitment feels, not what it costs, dangerously reducing a high-stakes clinical decision into a low-stakes impulse purchase.

As the founder of the UCL Fight the Fakes Collaborating Centre, I see another danger. Aggressive marketing by legitimate pharmacies can blur the distinction between regulated healthcare and illegal sellers. If legitimate online pharmacies begin to look like rogue e-commerce sites, illegal sellers have less distance to travel – and patients unable to afford legitimate treatment may turn to illicit offers.

That is why enforcement matters. Repeated ASA rulings and Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency interventions raise the question: have penalties become merely a cost of doing business?

Our patients deserve better. Britain does not lack rules governing prescription-medicine promotion. It lacks consequences strong enough for breaking them. Oksana Pyzik, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice & Policy, UCL School of Pharmacy London WC1

but public debate should distinguish regulated tanning from reckless online trends and uncontrolled outdoor exposure.

Gary Lipman

Teddington, London

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Size matters

Your editorial (“The Observer View: Road to joy”, News, last week) is right that Britain should rejoin the EU, but for the wrong reasons.

The gain lies in market size. Production depends on specialisation and scale: firms serving 450 million people can specialise, innovate and grow in ways confinement to 69 million cannot. As the economist Nicholas Kaldor noted in 1933, identical countries gain by pooling markets. Brexit has shrunk every exporter's home market and investment capacity.

Britain needs investment in capacity, regions and low-carbon industries. Rejoining would restore the scale and certainty to encourage it. Deregulating finance offers no guarantee.

Prof Terry Barker

Cambridge

In 2016, Remain was criticised for being too negative, while Leave offered positive, if ultimately illusory, benefits such as £350m a week for the NHS.

I have pointed to positive benefits from rejoining the EU, including an estimated £700m a week in extra tax revenue from increased trade. Yet when I make these points, Brexit supporters rarely respond with benefits of Brexit. Instead, they warn about the supposed dangers of rejoining – that we would have to adopt the euro, for example. We would not. It is ironic that those who once criticised “Project Fear” are now relying on it themselves.

Mike Cashman Author, “Brexit’s a Trick, not a Treat?” Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

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Devil is in the AI detail

AI Overviews (Google) has mystified my family with its errors: is this why canny investors are doing as Barney Macintyre describes (“AI’s monster debt problem could cause another crash, warns Enron short-seller”, Business, last week).

My family has received grossly misleading AI Overviews answers on subjects ranging from Harry Potter to the behaviour of vintage car suspensions over potholes.

As an epidemiologist and endocrinologist, “the most statistically likely” has, since 1968, been a graveyard of scientific hypotheses and careers. Admitting ignorance is the bedrock of science. I want AI to say: “I don’t really know, but possibly...”

The claim that a sentence is acceptable because it “sounds right” is devil-speak. Fluency is not truth. Yet AI Overviews did not know Hooke’s law of springs or Boyle’s law of gases without looking them up – laws I was taught at O-level.

Jonathan Reeve

Cambridge

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Electoral revisiting

Here we go again: the regular but short-lived enthusiasm for considering electoral reform (“First-past-the-post was built for a two-party Britain. That era is over”, Forum, last week).

And now we are apparently to have another commission. Why? The late Roy Jenkins produced an exceptionally thorough review in 1998, commissioned by Tony Blair. Blair promised a referendum in his 2001 manifesto. It never happened.

The 2011 referendum offered voters AV, a system that still elected one MP per constituency but allowed voters to rank candidates. Jenkins's preferred solution, $\mathrm{AV + }$ , retained the vital link between MPs and their local constituencies while adding a smaller number of additional MPs to make parliament more broadly representative of votes cast. Why not present

Jenkins's case to the public and let a cross-party group decide, rather than commission yet another report? Gerald Wallen Exeter, Devon

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Sudan, a war on women

I was deeply moved by Richard Branson's piece on Sudan (“Civilians are paying a heavy price for the world’s conflicts”, 27 September), having recently returned from Khartoum, where I worked as a paediatric nurse.

I agree with Médecins Sans Frontières' description of Sudan as a “war on people”, but I would argue it is particularly a war on women and children. Though I wasn't working where the fighting took place, I witnessed its aftermath: destroyed buildings, looted businesses, hospitals laid waste and families traumatised. Yet amid such devastation, the resilience of Sudan's people was extraordinary

– their generosity, laughter and hospitality. If we forget Sudan, we risk forgetting our shared humanity.

Ione Haddock

Leatherhead, Surrey

SAF

The Nuffield Foundation has asked us to clarify that it funded research into the life prospects of care-experienced people (“Take more care”, 20 September, page 3) rather than carrying it out.

---

A mantra to live by

\- Every care is taken to ensure that information in The Observer is accurate. We welcome feedback and aim to correct errors as swiftly as possible.

Melanie Reid's piece on air travel (“Crowds, chaos and ‘Tenergrief’: why air travel is the modern version of hell”, Forum, 27 September) made me think about how much we take for granted in moving billions of people around the world every year. The same is true of the NHS.

Middlesbrough is a town, not a city, as we mistakenly said in a review of the Turner prize (“Four decent contenders, one very tired prize”, New Review, 27 September, page 20).

Melanie never forgets to express her gratitude to those who have helped her. She has faced enormous challenges with great strength. Her mantra, “things could be worse”, says much about her outlook.

Mahesh Shah

Bangalore, India

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For the record

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England 7, Observer 0

Having watched England give one of the best performances I've seen (I'm 71) in trouncing Croatia 7-0, I have no hesitation in awarding The Observer the Most Curmudgeonly Headline Of The Year for its contribution the following morning: "England show they know how to save their best for when they need it least". Fergus Dignan

Frampton Mansell, Stroud

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Observers needed

Write to us

Letters, which may be edited, should include a full name, telephone number and postal address.

Send to:

Email letters@observer.co.uk (please insert Letters to the Editor in the subject field). Or write to us: Letters to the Editor The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W1T 3LP To be received by noon on Thursday. ▶ To request a correction or make a complaint please write to readers@observer.co.uk

Obituary

María del Carmen Abascal

The octogenarian activist whose refusal to leave her Madrid home shone a light on Spain's housing crisis

María del Carmen Abascal died just a month after her eviction from the Madrid apartment in which she had lived for 70 years. Gianfranco Tripodo/the New York Times

A n unlikely heroine of the Spanish tenants' rights movement, 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal, or Maricarmen as

she was popularly known, became a nationally mourned martyr last week when she died in Madrid's Gregorio Marañón Hospital.

The hospital was a short ambulance drive from the three-bedroom apartment in the upmarket Retiro district from which Abascal was evicted last month, around 70 years after she had moved in.

The sight of a disabled octogenarian being forcibly carried out on a stretcher was a textbook case of bad optics. It galvanised tens of thousands of Madrileños to protest, led to an occupation of the city's grand plaza Puerta del Sol, and compelled the embattled government of prime minister Pedro Sánchez to introduce emergency tenant protection legislation.

When his housing bill was rejected by the Spanish parliament, Sánchez called a snap election, two days before the death of the woman whose plight triggered the decision.

A private woman who led a low-key life, Abascal was a long way from the stereotype of a housing rights activist. But her struggle to remain in the home in which she'd spent all but her teenage years captured the imagination of Spaniards of all ages and from all walks of life.

In 1956, Abascal's father signed a contract to rent the apartment, a short walk from the city's Retiro park. In those days, at the height of the Franco regime, women did not share the legal rights of their spouses, so Abascal's mother was not registered as a joint tenant.

This was consequential – because when her father died, just four years later, the lease passed to her mother, but in Spanish law a lease can only be transferred once.

Nevertheless, Abascal transferred the lease, with its controlled rent, when her mother died in 2005 and all was fine until 2018, when an investment company bought the apartment at cut-price precisely because Abascal was a sitting tenant. The company then used the single lease transfer law to set about ousting Abascal. "If her mother had died first, we wouldn't be in this situation," said Carolina Vilariño of the Madrid Tenants' Union.

But the retired secretary was no pushover. She loved her neighbourhood, the routines she had established, her regular visits to the local butcher, and she was enormously proud of her home. “I’m going to fight to the very end,” she told interviewers.

Backed by the tenants' union, she emerged victorious in court, only for the investment company to take the case to the provincial court and win. When the supreme court rejected her application to appeal against that decision in December 2023, Abascal was left with nothing but her determination to die in her home.

As a result, her political symbolism has overshadowed her personal biography. Born in bomb-damaged Madrid in early 1939, just before the city fell to Franco's forces, Abascal appears to have been devoted to her parents. There is no mention in reports of siblings or a

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It took four attempts to evict her. By that time she was a folk heroine

marriage of her own. She worked for 34 years as secretary to the board of directors at a pharmaceutical company, and retired in 1998.

But her later life shed light on the growing problem of housing in Spain's major cities, where rents have galloped away from earnings in recent years, while housebuilding has lagged far behind demand. Housing benefit is among the lowest in Europe – Spain spends per person on housing subsidy roughly one tenth of what the UK government does.

Still protected by the original contract, Abascal's rent at €500 a month had remained a fraction of the market rate. The investment company wanted €2,600 but was prepared to accept €1,650 a month, which was more than the total of Abascal's pension.

There were three attempts to evict her before the fourth succeeded.

By that time she was a folk heroine. Celebrities invoked her name, and one writer, who wished to remain anonymous, offered to pay the difference in rent to the investment company, which rejected the offer.

Even from her hospital bed, Abascal rallied her supporters occupying Puerta del Sol. “I wish I could be there with you,” she said in a message, “joining your encampment and your struggle, but I don’t have that luck. So, from here, I ask you all to be brave.”

In truth, the battle for her home had taken a physical and psychological toll. In recent months she had lost weight and had become more incapacitated. One of the legal ironies of her case is that an exemption to the lease transference rule applies to people with 65% disability. Abascal was adjudged to be 50% disabled, though she was almost certainly more than that by the time she was forcibly carried out of her home.

A further irony is that the investment company, no doubt aware of the terrible publicity, reversed its position after Abascal was evicted. They agreed a protected rent, but as the statement put out by the tenants' union made clear, the solution "came too late".

Although she never returned home, Maricarmen is destined to haunt housing in Spain for a long time to come. Andrew Anthony

María del Carmen Abascal was born in early 1939 and died on 7 October 2026, aged 87

My week

Starling

dreamt last night that I was a handsome, shining, glossy, iridescent singer,

I filled with lavish ambitions for construction and lascivious thoughts about the female form divine. Nothing – absolutely nothing – could be further from the reality. How does the mind come up with such absurdities? And then I thought a little further... perhaps I really was that dashing fellow. Once.

---

Monday

Not possible. Surely not. Today, I'm quiet and self-effacing, a bird who takes a modest pride in his drabness. Females mean no more to me than any other neighbour. To be a millionth part of a flock is all my desire: to lose myself among many. Together we forage, together we

roost, together we fly: surely I could never want any other existence.

---

Tuesday

Our flock is small enough, a few hundred, but today we teamed up with another and life got a little better and a little safer as a result: so much less opportunity for the peregrines and sparrowhawks of outrageous fortune to pick me out. Or anyone else.

---

Wednesday

And as the year advances we prepare for our famous murmurations. I can feel the urge for that glorious experience rising inside me, for I vividly remember those wintry dusks of last year when we danced the great dance of the sky and did so in hundreds of thousands: the

amoeba, the

ferris wheel, the

great wave, the UFO, the waterfall,

the rising and the falling curtain...

---

Thursday

It looks like a dance intensely choreographed, much rehearsed and controlled by a single mind, but in reality every dance is a spontaneous masterpiece with many authors. It works because with creatures our size, it takes almost no time at all for a message to travel from brain to muscle: we convert thought into action in an instant. We never crash into each other because we have

I remember those wintry dusks when we danced the great dance of the sky

360-degree vision, a strong understanding of personal space and a honed ability to comprehend the air shifted by our neighbours in the flock.

---

Friday

You know, I'm beginning to remember the swaggering fellow I was just a few weeks ago. Yes, indeed: I sang songs with a million variations – how Mozart loved a starling! – built a nest to dream of and was utterly obsessed by my speckled starling hen. Now I've almost forgotten what she looks like. But yes, I'm sure we raised three chicks and saw them fly: it must have been a moment of triumph. Perhaps, unknowing, we'll all dance together in the same murmuration when winter is here.

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Saturday

I foraged, I probed, I hawked I lunged and I fed well. The day ended in a tentative dance, not the full thing, but the consolations of winter are almost upon us: the long, long dusky times when we celebrate the joyous unity of the flock. If I make it to next spring, I will once again become the shimmering debonair starling-about-town and care only about some new and glorious hen. Until then, my name is many.

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Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) CV

Lifespan Five years for the lucky ones Eating habits Invertebrates for choice Hobbies Dancing at dusk Sexual preferences Don't bother me with that now

As told to Simon Barnes

Profile

Aaron Sorkin

The West Wing creator's new film on Meta is an elegant howl of protest, Barbara Ellen writes

T

The US screenwriter, playwright and film-maker Aaron Sorkin, 65, signed up for Facebook twice: first while writing his 2010 film The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay, then while writing and directing The Social Reckoning, a follow-up of sorts to the original feature. After the projects, he cancelled his accounts.

The Social Network was a wry, witty, deep dive into the psychology of Facebook and Meta founder, Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg. The new picture is more condemnatory and investigative, sidelining Zuckerberg, portrayed by Jeremy Strong, and focusing on Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (Anora's Mikey Madison) and Pulitzer-prize winning Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who worked together to expose the knowingly addictive, corrosive and divisive practices of the algorithm.

If The Social Reckoning sounds like an elegantly expressed howl of protest, that is on-brand for Sorkin. His award-garlanded career started in the 1980s and spans television (starting with Sports Night), film (Moneyball) and theatre (such as the Camelot revival on Broadway). But it is The West Wing – the White House political drama that ran from 1999 to 2006, starring Martin Sheen as US president Josiah “Jed” Bartlet – that is his magnum opus. With its distinctive fast-paced dialogue (intentionally elevated beyond normal speech), spiky cultural references, intellectual philosophising and his trademark device of the “walk and talk” (characters in deep discussion while hurrying along), the show cemented Sorkin’s reputation for bending, and even breaking, the rules of TV.

Mark Lawson, journalist, broadcaster, author and cultural commentator for the Guardian, remains a huge fan of The West Wing, and feels that Sorkin constructed “a passionate liberal fantasy”. He

said: “Bill Clinton was an extraordinary president, but essentially The West Wing is: ‘If you had a Bill Clinton who was not as flawed as Bill Clinton was.’”

Lawson, who has met Sorkin, said of him: "He's fantastically intelligent and articulate, and crouched and alert. He listens to every word in the question and then gives an incredibly precise reply." Peter Hall, the theatre director, said that very good playwrights and screenwriters, talk like their work, and that's certainly true of Sorkin.

Playwright and screenwriter Mike Bartlett, whose hit BBC drama Doctor Foster returns next year, feels

that Sorkin brings real artistry to the screen. "Sorkin understands that language has a rhythm, and that hitting that rhythm elevates the language," he says. He adds that Sorkin is funny: "He knows that you earn the right to meaning and seriousness by engaging the audience through humour."

The Social

Reckoning is on

trend in a season

promising

several highly

critical “tech

bro"-themed cinema releases: from Luca Guadagnino's Artificial movie, about OpenAI chief Sam Altman; to Nathan Fielder's docufilm You Can See Everything, about Theranos-founder Elizabeth Holmes; to Alex Gibney's documentary Musk (about Elon Musk).

“This is what dramatists need to do,” says Bartlett, “Look at the people that have the power. For Shakespeare, that was kings. For us, it’s the tech bosses. They have power, in some ways unaccountable power, and who is going to hold them to account?”

Sorkin was born into a Jewish family in the New York City suburb of Scarsdale, his father a lawyer and his mother a teacher. After gaining a bachelor of fine arts degree in musical theatre at the University of Scarsdale, he scrabbled for work as an actor before staging his first play, Removing All Doubt, in 1984.

In 1992, the film version of his military morality play, A Few Good

Aaron Sorkin

Born New York, 1961

Alma mater

University of Scarsdale

Work

Screenwriter, film-maker

Family

Daughter, Roxy, 25, a film-maker and actor

Illustration by Andy Bunday

Men, directed and produced by Rob Reiner, established Sorkin's instinct for storytelling and memorable dialogue ("You can't handle the truth!"). Audacious and industrious (he wrote nearly every episode – 87 – of the first four series of The West Wing), Sorkin forged a reputation as a hard-smoking “physical” writer, with a perma-preppy appearance: Hamptons-esque chic, with a side order of dishevelment, sometimes getting up from his desk to speak the script out loud.

In the past Sorkin has been criticised for disparaging the performances of female actors, including by Natalie Portman, and for not writing strong enough female parts. He has also suffered

drug addiction: in 2001, he was arrested at Burbank airport, Los Angeles, for carrying crack cocaine, psychedelic

mushrooms and marijuana in his luggage. After fully recovering from his addictions, Sorkin said he didn't even touch drugs until his mid-20s. A screenwriter who moved in the same early-2000s Hollywood circles confirms: "He was really straight and wholesome and didn't experiment with drugs... Then, he literally went [from nothing] to taking crack."

Part of Sorkin's legacy is his career-long commitment to tackling big questions. "He comes back to

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Sorkin's ‘interest in the news has been validated by the Trump years’

these central themes," says Lawson: "Politics, news and now tech." Sorkin's fascination with the behind-the-scenes nature of television manifested in past shows such as Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (said to be based on Saturday Night Live) and The Newsroom.

Lawson feels that if there is a fault in his work, "it's the tendency towards liberal bias".

“his interest in news has been validated by the Trump years. What news is, what can be done with news, has become a really big question of our time. And he was on to that very early.”

Sorkin now lives in Hollywood. Following a stroke in 2022, he stopped smoking and took up healthy living. He shares a 25-year-old daughter, Roxy, a film-maker and actor, with his former wife, lawyer Julia Bingham.

Is Sorkin still the greatest storyteller of our times? Certainly, he's still kicking against the pricks. His 2000s-era Hollywood contemporary observes: "In a time of extreme polemic and moral purity tests, he's still trying to find nuance. He still wants to be viewed as the voice of America's moral conscience." Lawson agrees: "Sorkin is one of the greats... Relatively few writers become an adjective for their dialogue: There's Stoppardian, Pinterest... and indeed Sorkin-esque."

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Economics, work and money

'The FCA can blame whatever they want... we still should never have come to this kind of outcome'

→ Death of a whistleblower, page 52

Data from Ukrainian drones could be vital to the security of UK military bases. Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP

British startups using goldmine of Ukraine drone data to build AI

Three firms have been given access to millions of hours of battlefield footage in first phase of MoD ‘drone swarm’ plan, reports Barney Macintyre

A trio of UK startups are seeing the first results from their priority access to a “treasure trove” of data collected from drones on Ukrainian battlefields, part of an exclusive partnership struck with Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.

British firms Sintela, Mind Foundry and Skyral signed contracts to join the pilot in August and were tasked with designing AI models that can assist with protection against fast-evolving drone capabilities, which could prove essential to the security of UK military bases such as RAF Fairfield, recently the subject of an investigation.

The Ministry of Defence last week launched an “Avengers AI Labs” competition for 12 more firms to gain access to the data to use in developing British-made “drone swarms” that will work even when communications are degraded or satellite navigation is unavailable.

The data contains sensor information on more than 6 million detected objects, such as tanks, artillery, air defence systems, infantry, aerial targets and drones.

Samuel Bendett, a drone expert with the US Center for Naval Analyses, says this “absolute treasure trove” contains an estimated 4 million hours of footage, which is likely to be highly coveted by governments across the world as they seek to bolster their defence capabilities.

It is understood that there were no financial terms agreed as part of the deal. The MoD has been approached for comment.

Sintela, founded in Bristol in 2017, has developed a technology that effectively turns ordinary fibre-optic cables into miles-long listening devices. It works by pulsing thousands of beams of light down a cable; when something nearby makes a noise or shakes the ground, the light signal changes. AI trained using real-world recordings then classifies what those signals mean: footsteps, digging, vehicles, fence cutting or drones.

“It’s a very powerful technology, but it’s only as good as our ability to create algorithms, and our ability to

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'It's a very powerful technology, but only as good as our ability to create algorithms' Magnus McEwen-King

create algorithms relies on simulating or experiencing real-world events," said Magnus McEwen-King, Sintela's founder and chief executive.

"It's no different from the way AI can pick out cancer cells in a mammogram. That's possible because a doctor spent years identifying what's cancer and what's not. Now the AI is better than the human."

The company's biggest customer is US Customs and Border Protection, which has signed a \$200m multi-year contract. Sintela's systems are also used to detect disruption to oil pipelines, railways and undersea cables. Mind Foundry, which has been working in partnership with Sintela on the Avengers pilot, is focused on using AI to "knit" together different types of data, including acoustic information from thousands of microphones on Ukrainian battlefields. The company was spun out of Oxford University 11 years ago by academics who had studied whether you could identify a malaria-carrying mosquito from the vibration of its wings. It later helped to upgrade the Royal Navy's Thales sonar system, which is used for tracking submarines.

Part of the challenge the MoD set firms such as Mind Foundry is to align the pace of innovation with the “24-6-6” rule: 24 hours until the enemy attacks; six weeks until your software is redundant; six months until it’s replaced in its entirety.

"A significant challenge facing the defence industry and Ukraine today is spotting fibre-optic drones that are designed to avoid traditional detection methods," said Lindsay Chadwick, chief executive of Mind Foundry. "The opportunity lies in finding new ways to identify these systems, whether through acoustics, signal processing or sensor fusion."

The UK-Ukraine deal has prompted speculation that other countries, for instance in the Gulf or the Baltics, could negotiate access to the data “room” in return for knowledge-sharing, weapons or cash.

“Ukraine is limiting access to this data to countries which have [signed a] drone deal and have government-to-government agreements,” said Kateryna Bondar, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This doesn’t exist with the United States.”

However, there are signs that US companies may be accessing this valuable drone footage by other means. In June, Enabled Intelligence, a Virginia-based AI startup, told the DefenseScoop news website that it had access to more than “half a million hours of Ukraine conflict drone footage”. It’s not known what it charges firms for access to this library.

For Britain, its close diplomatic relationship with Ukraine could lead to a blossoming of commercial opportunities, but this will depend on clever applications, swift procurement processes and canny deals.

“We don’t have the privilege of America’s \$1.5tn defence budget... but Ukraine has shown that when you’re really under pressure, this is how you can be economical; how few people you can do it with,” said Michael Holmes, head of another UK-based defence startup, Alloyed, which is not involved in the Avengers programme.

McEwen-King says the UK environment for defence tech firms could be better. The R&D tax relief system, and recent speculation that the government could raise capital gains tax, have made the US's deep pools of capital even more tempting. He said he wouldn't rule out a sale.

“My founders and I put our own resources, houses and money on the line to build a UK-based hi-tech company,” he says. “Would I do that again? I would have to think very, very hard.”

The minutes

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Companies

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Royal Mail to axe 2,500 non-frontline jobs

Royal Mail is looking to overhaul its business and plans to cut 2,500 head office and support jobs by next year. The 500-year-old postal service has paid fines totalling £37m for missed delivery targets since 2023, and is now trying to restructure amid a continuing decline in letter deliveries: the volume of letters sent through post offices and the well-loved red pillar boxes has dropped by 70% since its 2000s peak.

No operational frontline jobs are expected to be affected. "These proposed changes remove duplication and allow us to invest further in the service we deliver for our customers," said chief executive Alistair Cochrane.

Unions are less convinced. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said: “This is not good for employees or customers. It will not improve quality of service, and the workforce must not be made the scapegoats for poor decisions made by the company, the government or Ofcom.”

Finance

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SpaceX's \$40bn debt bid spooks investors

The price of SpaceX shares slid this week as its credit risk hit a record high. Elon Musk's company announced it was seeking to raise \$40bn in loans and debt to purchase Nvidia chips. For those investors already sceptical of SpaceX's capacity to launch data centres into space or provide frontier AI models in the near future, the plans to take on additional debt raised eyebrows. The question, ultimately, is whether these AI bets will generate future revenue. The price of five-year credit default swaps on SpaceX, a measure of perceived credit risk, increased to the highest level since Musk led the conglomerate to its blockbuster IPO in June this year.

Risk radar

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Lag on ID checks raises fake directorship fears

Tens of thousands of active UK companies may be being run by potentially fraudulent directors, an investigation by the Financial Times has found. A rule requiring company directors to verify their identities with photo ID came in in November 2025. Data from enterprise software group Shareflo suggests that the number of overdue filings has since doubled. As of June 2026, just 55% of UK company directors had verified their identities, according to Companies House statistics. The UK corporate register seems to be in agreement that such measures “make it harder for fictitious directors to be appointed”, but critics point to the laxity of the regime and warn of further fraud as fake IDs become easier to obtain.

Unimportant

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Economy

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Government counts the cost of a hostile Russia

The “Putin tax”, a first-of-its-kind measure of the economic impact of Russian hostile activity against Britain, is amounting to up to £2.5bn annually. An eponymous new report this week by the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament tallied the costs of disruption, recovery and investment, but its lead, Labour MP Graeme Downie, suggested the total could be “vastly higher” than the forecast. This “tax” encompasses damage to subsea communications cables and annual losses for major companies suffering from Russia-linked cyber attacks, but other major incidents are unaccounted for. Downie called for a clear framework for

the fallout from hostile-state activity, and urged MPs that the UK could not “deter Russia or anyone else if we aren’t honest with the British people about the threats we face and the cost the ‘Putin Tax’ is having on our country”. The Ministry of Defence has yet to announce whether it will formalise a public methodology for assessing hostile-state threats.

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Policy

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Ireland pledges £1.4bn to ease cost of living

Last week's Irish budget included £1.4bn of tax cuts aimed at helping with surging energy and childcare costs. The tax changes focused on addressing the cost of living crisis. "People need to feel the benefits of economic growth in their pockets," said Simon Harris, Ireland's finance minister, adding that "extraordinary circumstances do call for new and extraordinary measures".

The carbon tax on home heating oil and gas was cut, and the threshold for paying income tax was raised to €46,500. Harris's job was made easier by ballooning corporate tax receipts as US multinationals continue to favour the country's competitive tax regime, but he risks the ire of the government's independent fiscal watchdog, which has previously argued that more of this windfall should be banked. Voters are likely to approve, with the cost of living cited as a top concern.

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Hot commodity

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Wealthy Gen Zs buying into fine art market

A new report has shown that affluent Gen Zs spent more on fine art over the past year than any other generation. The annual Art Basel and UBS report found that high-net-worth Gen Zs, defined as individuals with disposable household income over \$1m, were spending at levels more than twice as high as older generations, and they made up nearly half of all collectors buying artworks for more than \$1m.

Georgina Adam, author of the book NextGen Collectors and the Art Market, said the use of social media was behind the difference between Gen Z collectors and those who came before them. “They like experiences. Things they can put on Instagram, for example.” But she cautioned: “You cannot imagine that all Gen Zs are suddenly buying masses of art... These are rich.”

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Technology

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Norway mulls partial ban on 'pervert glasses'

The Norwegian government is proposing a temporary ban on the use of smart glasses in some public spaces, making it the first in the world to bring forward restrictions on the controversial product. The move could pave the way for longer-term EU regulation of the so-called “pervert glasses”. The market for AI glasses is projected to generate \$44bn in sales by 2032, but they have sparked public backlash over privacy concerns. “We must avoid making the same mistake we made 15 years ago with social media,” said Norway’s digitalisation minister, Torgeir Micaelsen.

Movers and shakers

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Bumblebee flies into first place for new banknote designs

The Bank of England announced the animals that will appear on the UK's next generation of banknotes, taking the place of the historical figures appearing on notes today. After a public consultation that attracted half a million responses, the buff-tailed bumblebee, the barn owl, the Atlantic puffin and the European hedgehog were chosen as the best representatives of UK wildlife.

The red fox and the kingfisher might feel they have lost out, given that both attracted more votes than the puffin, but the latter was selected as the most popular marine animal, to ensure variety. The bumblebee romped home as the most popular choice, racking up more than 360,000 votes.

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Vital statistics

2.25m

The number of barrels of diesel to be immediately released from Russia under the deal between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. This will be followed by 3.75m barrels in November and 7.5m barrels “immediately thereafter”.

The release isn't expected to halt the global diesel supply crunch, but is expected to somewhat ease price pressures in the run-up to the US midterms in November. Farmers and truckers are both heavy users of diesel and important political constituencies. Trump simultaneously stepped up pressure on the Ukrainian government to cease attacks on Russian oil refineries.

Britain is winning the zero-emissions race. Now's not the time to make carmakers apply the brakes

OPINION

Michael

Lohscheller

B ritain is now Polestar's biggest market in the world. So as the government consults on changes to the zero-emission

vehicle (ZEV) mandate, we have more riding on its decision than almost anyone.

Some in my industry want the targets watered down. We want the opposite. Keep the targets on course. Keep the definition of a zero-emission car tight. And don't reopen the rules again in two years.

You might say I would say that, since we sell only electric cars. But this matters if you want British carmaking to succeed, want to keep good jobs here, or are worried about our climate emergency.

This matters to anyone buying a car. Carmakers decide model by model which markets get their newest electric cars first. A weaker mandate means fewer electric models allocated to Britain: less choice, less competition, higher prices.

The case for holding firm starts with the market because the shift has already happened. In September, a record 99,201 battery-electric cars were registered in Britain, up 36% on a year earlier and 28.3% of the market. Buyers are getting younger, and for most people under 50, combustion is no longer part of the decision. Polestar's average customer is 45, about a decade younger than the industry average. And with oil back above \$100 a

Polestar wants zero-emission targets boosted in the UK.

Robert Way/

Getty Images

Alignment should mean keeping pace with our neighbours' customers, not our neighbours' politics barrel this year, drivers have been reminded that the price of petrol is set in the Strait of Hormuz, not in Britain.

Our neighbours are moving faster still. In September, electric cars took 42% of new car sales in France and 34.5% in Germany, where more electric cars were registered than petrol and diesel cars combined. Cars built here must sell there too: 77% of cars built in the UK are exported. Some argue Britain should follow Brussels, which has proposed softening its 2035 goal. But Europe's buyers aren't waiting for Brussels.

Alignment should mean keeping pace with our neighbours' customers, not our neighbours' politics. Policy should back that momentum, not break it. The mandate isn't holding the market back; the market is ahead of it. Once the mandate's built-in flexibilities are counted, manufacturers need to reach an effective $24.6\%$ electric share this year. The market has already delivered $26.2\%$ so far.

Certainty is the real industrial policy. When carmakers know where the industry is heading, they can invest for the longer term. There is

a legitimate debate to be had about the pace at which the targets ramp up, but the end destination – 2030 for stopping the sale of new pure petrol and diesel cars, and 2035 for the end of new combustion-engine cars including hybrids – shouldn't be in question. Weakening the mandate wouldn't make Britain an easier place to sell cars, just a harder place to plan them.

Predictable targets attract long-term commitment from manufacturers at home and abroad, and with that come jobs, skills and healthy competition. As the electric car industry grows, so does everything around it: the supply chain, the servicing and repair network, and the skills and knowhow of the people who build and maintain the cars. Consumers experience that as lower prices, better service and better cars. Polestar is an example. Our performance grand tourer, the Polestar 5, was engineered in the Midlands by a team drawn from the best motorsport industry in the world. That is a live British strength, and it exists because Britain was open to international capital, talent and technology.

As tariffs rise worldwide, closer alignment with Europe's “Made in Europe” rules could make sense, but only if it keeps Britain open to global investment, not closed off from it. Britain won't win by developing every technology within its borders. It will win by being the place where the world's best technologies are developed, manufactured and scaled.

The choice is between protecting the past and competing for the future. The generation now buying its first car has already made that choice. Policy should keep up.

Michael Lohscheller is the chief executive of Polestar

Tariffs on China are a shield the UK may not need to hide behind

Ben Zaranko

Economics editor

As EU policymakers draw up plans for a new “Made in Europe” initiative aimed at protecting European manufacturing against Chinese competition, the UK government is scrambling to limit the collateral damage. Hamish Falconer, the UK’s chief negotiator with Brussels, held talks with his EU counterparts last week in a bid to secure UK inclusion.

The challenge posed by Chinese competition is perhaps most visible on the UK's roads, given the growing popularity of electric and hybrid cars from the likes of Jaecoo. Yet China's growing dominance in hi-tech manufacturing is a much wider story.

In a recent report for the Chatham House thinktank, research fellow James Kynge highlights other strategic industries as under threat. In pharmaceuticals, for example – traditionally a European strength

– one executive warned earlier this year that clinical development of medicines can now be conducted three times faster in China than in Europe and at roughly half the cost.

"There is a real possibility that over the next five years, Europe will lose much of its industrial base to Chinese competition," Kynge writes. "Not only will this result in the further loss of jobs and expertise, it may also mean the loss of companies with long histories of technological excellence and contributions to local communities. Europe is in a battle for its industrial future – one that it is currently on a trajectory to lose.”

In many ways, it's not a fair fight. The Chinese state provides vast subsidies to its manufacturers, many times larger than those provided in Europe, and intervenes to hold down the value of its currency – perhaps by as much as 30% – which makes its exports more competitive.

Then there's the longstanding issue that Chinese households save large amounts and consume relatively little, which means China's vast manufacturing output has to be sent abroad, where it becomes someone else's problem.

China agreed this week to restrict its car exports to Europe, but that may be too little too late to prevent a response from the

EU, which is developing new tools to be deployed in any future dispute, and progressing plans for “Made in Europe”. The latter would require that wherever public money is involved (for example, in government procurement), a minimum share of the goods in question must be produced in Europe – with the definition of “Europe” yet to be determined. The UK is reportedly considering imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to align with the EU’s position, in a bid to avoid its firms being shut out.

Such a move could be warranted, but the UK should be cautious about following the EU headlong into a more protectionist stance with China. The UK doesn't have the same industrial base as Germany, and is less exposed to Chinese competition.

The UK also stands to benefit more from opportunities to export services to an increasingly prosperous China. And UK consumers evidently like having access to low-cost, high-quality Chinese cars.

The world is changing: trade is increasingly unfree, and the rules-based order is clearly in retreat. The UK may need to update its thinking and adapt its position accordingly. But we should be careful not to import the European economic debate, in the way that we all too often import cultural debates from the US. We have distinct interests of our own.

Chinese workers at a Grand Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Holdings lab in Wuhan.

observer.co.uk

11.10.26

Business

Warner Bros is Silicon Valley's latest prize – but it could yet turn out a flop

Skydance's acquisition of the media giant is the latest step in tech firms' steady takeover of Hollywood, reports Stephen Armstrong

David Ellison finally won his year-long battle to buy Warner Bros Discovery last Tuesday, moving control of the US's third oldest film studio, the news channel CNN, the HBO Max streaming service and franchises such as Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones into the hands of the Trump-supporting Ellison family. It's the start of a restructuring that will change entertainment.

With Ellison's father, Larry, backing the deal through shares in his AI company, Oracle, ownership of Hollywood is passing into the hands of Silicon Valley, according to Ed Waller, editorial director of C21 Media, the UK-based industry bible. This leaves Disney as the only major studio not owned by a tech company.

'Someone from Apple said this Hollywood stuff is less than 1% of my revenue, but it's 45% of my headaches'

Richard Rushfield, writer

"If you look at the studios, you have Amazon owning MGM, Sony owning Columbia, Oracle effectively owning Warners and Paramount, Comcast owning Universal. Then you have Apple and Netflix with their streamers," he said.

Richard Rushfield, founder of Hollywood Substack the Ankler, agrees. “Something like 70% of production in Hollywood is under the tech banner,” he said. “But the history of Hollywood is a history of every business in America that has too much cash on hand suddenly deciding they should be making movies. You’ve had soda companies, parking companies and oil companies all deciding that. They always discover that it’s really hard... There’s no public defeat like losing in Hollywood. Which is why someone from Apple said, “This Hollywood stuff is less than 1% of my revenue, but it’s 45% of my headaches.”

Ellison has been attempting to prove that he's up to the job. In a series of events last week, the owner of the renamed Skydance said he would spend more on content than Netflix or Disney, make roughly 190 series and 30 movies a year with a budget of up to \$40bn, find at least \$6bn in savings and tackle the company's \$80bn debt mountain. Major studios such as Disney release about 20 movies a year, with top films like Avengers: Doomsday costing \$300m. Netflix launches up to 600 original series a year, and spent \$20bn on programming in 2026.

The problem is that huge debt, which includes existing liabilities at Skydance and Warner Bros, and money Ellison borrowed to secure the deal. Skydance's largest refinancing tests will fall in 2031 and 2033, although some significant loans will mature in 2028 and 2029.

On the day of the deal, the credit ratings agency Fitch gave Skydance a BB, or junk, rating. The company has about five years to improve its credit metrics before it has to go back to the bond markets.

Ellison says he'll make \$6bn in cost savings from the merger, though at \$5.8bn, his annual interest bill is almost at that level. He has also secured investment from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds – UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – which supplied \$24bn in exchange for 49.5% of the company.

Mathew Horsman, co-founder of the Mediatique consultancy, suggested that the potential need to tap backers for new financing “may explain why an early move was to appoint Tony Blair as an adviser to the board, because he knows the Emiratis. They may consolidate the consumer-facing propositions. This should be a big piece of consolidation.”

"Hollywood is getting smaller," said Tom Harrington from Enders Analysis. "This isn't a merging of studios – it's a merging of the streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+. What's the point of buying another studio if you already make films? You just make more films if you want more films."

He says Skydance's financial future comes down to three things: how much cash the business generates, what prior claims exist on that cash, and whether the remainder can pay down debt fast enough.

The financial picture is further complicated by the increasingly weak share price and debt rating of Larry Ellison's Oracle. Ellison senior agreed to provide an irrevocable personal guarantee of \$40.4bn in equity financing to backstop the hostile takeover. Oracle's share price has halved since he gave that guarantee, partly thanks to its long-term \$160bn debt.

When asked by staff about his relationship with Trump, he acknowledged that the company has “a good relationship with this administration”, but added that that was now under review.

Ellison spent most of last Thursday with CNN, and vocally supported the channel's bid to regain permanent access to the White House press room. He has agreed to set up an editorial independence board that will oversee both CBS News and CNN, although no details have been released.

Having secured the deal, David Ellison has spent the week trying to reassure staff and detach himself from the Trump administration. During his takeover bid for Paramount, he sought to reassure Trump that CBS News coverage would be less hostile, and installed rightwing journalist Bari Weiss to oversee the network's news programming.

Warner Bros Discovery has a proud new owner. Mario Tama/Getty

Some announcements were met with dismay. Among the first post-merger departures were Warners film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, the last champions of “originals” in a system geared to IP and franchises.

Cable networks

BET ● Discovery Channel

Comedy Central ● HGTV

MTV ● TBS

Nikelodeon ● TNT

TV Land ● TLC

Franchises

CSI • DC Comics

The Godfather • Game of Thrones

Mission: Impossible • Harry Potter

NCIS • Lord of the Rings

Yellowstone

They have overseen critically acclaimed hits such as Navalny, Barbie, Challengers, Sinners, One Battle After Another and Wuthering Heights.

"One week before Sinners came out, everyone at CinemaCon was saying the movie is going to be a disaster and Mike and Pam were going to be overthrown. And that was after they'd seen the trailers. They were prepared to take risks, have flops, but deliver huge original hits."

De Luca and Abdy's slate will constitute Warner's output until 2029, given films' long lead times. And, as experts point out, both HBO Max and Paramount+ have at least two years left on their deals with cable companies. The big changes and the measure of Ellison's success are years away. Assuming the debts don't claim him first.

"It's very questionable whether those movies would have been made anywhere else," said Rushfield. "Certainly not at the level they ended up making them. For most of the other studios, those kinds of films exist within specialty smaller-budget labels such as Focus or Searchlight.

“For now, it’s all eyes on Sony Columbia,” said Horsman. “They have a studio, but they haven’t got a network TV business. They haven’t got a streamer. It’s interesting to look at what their next steps are.”

Select Skydance properties that were previously part of

■ Paramount Skydance

■ Warner Bros. Discovery

Movie studios

Paramount ● Warner Bros.

Pictures Pictures

TV studios

CBS Studios ● Warner Bros.

Paramount ● Television

Television Studios

Source: Nate Rattner, WSJ

News properties

CBS News ● CNN

The Free Press ●

Streaming platforms

Paramount+ ● Discovery+

Pluto TV ● HBO Max

Allison Kirkby, who took the helm at BT in 2024.

Lluís Gené/AFP/ Getty Images

BT's TalkTalk takeover: safety net or stitch-up?

The culture secretary orders a review into the deal within hours of its announcement as telecoms giant grabs an even bigger chunk of the broadband market. Barney Macintyre and Andrew Cave report.

BT Group's £400m rescue takeover of TalkTalk raises more questions than it answers. Within hours of the deal being signed, in the early hours of last Monday morning, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, ordered the competition regulator to review the arrangement that seals BT's ownership of the heavily indebted broadband provider that had for years been a customer of its subsidiary, Openreach.

BT, which operates mobile and broadband provider EE and the Plusnet brand, already controls roughly 30% of the broadband retail market. TalkTalk accounts for 6.6%. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is due to report back on 19 October, but it's the government that gets the final say.

BT boss Allison Kirkby said the deal was “a safety net”. Rival Virgin Media called it a “stitch up”. Who’s right (if anyone)? How did we get here? And what does it mean for Britain’s beleaguered telecoms market?

BT's case is that TalkTalk's 2.5 million retail and wholesale customers were at genuine risk of a broadband blackout as the company careered towards liquidation, and repeated attempts to find a buyer over two years fell through. Nandy, sources close to the company argue, should be given credit for stepping in to avert what she called a “genuine risk to life” that could see telecare users, GP surgeries and emergency services digitally severed. It was a flash of interventionism, they note, that has not been so evident in other regulated industries, such as water.

The argument from competitors, and sources close to TalkTalk, is that BT refused to lend the requisite support to rival bidders, including Epiris and Octopus Investments, which were seeking to parcel up TalkTalk's operations – and as a result is now on the verge of restoring its monopoly.

They point to figures that show that between March 2017 and March 2026 profits at Openreach, which supplied TalkTalk with the copper and fibre lines into most of its customers' homes, rose by two-thirds, to £2.1bn, while profits across the rest of BT, which also pays Openreach for access but is also facing mobile price competition and international losses, more than halved to £1.26bn.

They contend that this is the result of Ofcom, the regulator, changing its priority from instilling competition to getting fibre built fast. BT was given “enormous pricing power” over its old copper lines, including inflation-linked rises that reached about 11% at peak (measured each November). Consumer rules limited the ability of providers to pass those costs on to customers. One source described it as “climbing an escalator that’s been going down faster and faster”.

An Ofcom spokesperson rejected the suggestion that its approach caused TalkTalk's financial difficulties and said other broadband providers had operated successfully under the regulatory framework.

An Openreach spokesperson said: "Over the past decade Openreach has invested more than £15bn building a new full-fibre broadband network across the UK... Despite this massive investment, the wholesale price of a 40mbps broadband connection is less than $3\%$ higher today than it was in 2017."

TalkTalk made its own missteps too. Openreach's prices were set at the same level for other providers, Sky and Vodafone, which seem to have survived just fine (although neither company publishes separate profit figures for its broadband business, so it's hard to tell).

During its years as a public company, from 2010 to 2021, TalkTalk's market value peaked at about £4.8bn in 2015, before falling to £1.1bn. After a buyout in 2021, its net debt rose from 2.2 times operating profit in 2022 to 4.4 times by 2025. BT, through Openreach, was a major creditor. TalkTalk entered administration with about £1.5bn of debt.

What the takeover means for customers is up in the air. And this is probably not the end of a wave of consolidation in the sector. The purchase of TalkTalk from administrators Alvarez & Marsal was the eighth major UK telecoms deal since the £3bn merger of Virgin Media O2's business telecoms arm and Daisy Group last year.

Enders Analysis has identified Virgin Media O2 and CityFibre as leading consolidators, as several heavily indebted fibre networks struggle to win sufficient business to justify high investment levels.

The competition regulator has its work cut out – and the timing of the BT-TalkTalk review is awkward. On the Friday before the deal was agreed, the CMA provisionally found that Nexfibre's £2bn acquisition of Substantial, parent company of Netomnia, would “result in a substantial lessening of competition” in the wholesale market.

Virgin Media O2's two parent companies, Liberty Global and Spanish telecoms group Telefónica, own Nexfibre through a joint venture with InfraVia Capital Partners, so Virgin Media O2 is unlikely to let this one lie. The company's boss, Lutz Schüler, has written a furious letter to Nandy, arguing that “credible alternative arrangements should be fully explored”.

Euan Blair: Train workers to use AI or risk ‘productivity doom loop’

Barney Macintyre

Business editor

The chief executive of the UK's largest apprenticeships provider has warned of the hit to productivity caused by workers never having been “shown how to do their jobs differently”. Euan Blair, founder of £1.6bn tech training company Multiverse, said research from his company shows workers' poor data skills cost employers almost six weeks of productivity a year.

Blair, who is the eldest son of the former prime minister Tony Blair, told The Observer: "AI is arguably even more of a threat to someone in their 50s who has been doing the same job in the same way for decades than it is to someone in their early 20s." He urged employers to keep a closer eye on their staff's proficiency.

He added that studies on AI's impact on the labour market had deemed it “quite small”, while higher employment costs were “a real issue and a genuine challenge”.

In March, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that AI-driven productivity growth would cut annual borrowing by £50bn by 2030-31, but so far proficiency in AI varies widely from sector to sector. Multiverse research found that the share of data time healthcare workers spent inefficiently fell from 41% to

35% last year, while financial services moved the other way, from 32.5% to 35%, as did councils, from 30% to 32%.

Many remain wary of how AI will affect their workplace, and Multiverse has experienced this at first hand. Last month teachers working for the company complained to the Guardian about the “horrendous stress” they had been under from AI being used to analyse and rate their teaching.

Blair acknowledged that any workforce will include people “fearful” of AI. He said: “We make no apologies about the fact that we literally make sure we are giving the best learner and customer experience by having AI in the loop for the sessions that we do.”

Euan Blair runs the UK's largest apprenticeship provider.

Since raising an additional \$70m earlier this year from investors including Schroders Capital, Index Ventures and General Catalyst, Multiverse has increasingly focused on retraining and upskilling employees already in work, rather than on graduates seeking a first job.

Blair also appeals to unions, now feeling more confident under the government of Andy Burnham, to pay attention to AI skills: “The best way to protect your members is to make sure they are equipped with the skills to use AI effectively. Otherwise you get caught in this productivity doom loop, and job losses become more inevitable.”

FCA faces a grilling over death of Wall Street whistleblower

A group of MPs has called for scrutiny of the financial watchdog's treatment of those who report wrongdoing after suicide of banker

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Barney Macintyre Business editor

The UK's financial watchdog held its annual meeting last Tuesday. For the executives in the room it was an uncomfortable few hours.

Questions about the FCA's approach to AI, consumer protection, or whether it plans to renew a contract with Palantir (answer: TBD) took a back seat. The meeting was instead dominated by discussion about how the regulator handles whistleblowing.

This was prompted by the death of Simon Andriesz, a 57-year-old British

Advertising Standards Authority

asa.org.uk

So the ASA regulates UK ads, including online? Oh yes.®

banker who took his own life last month after revealing alleged wrongdoing at a Wall Street firm formerly run by the US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick. In response to how his whistleblowing case and others have been handled by the regulator, a group of cross-party MPs has called for an external review. The FCA has proposed that one be led by its non-executive director Lea Paterson.

"The FCA can blame whatever they want, whether it's their own bureaucratic processes or channels, or that they're handicapped by regulations... We still should never have come to this kind of outcome," says Pav Gill, the lawyer who blew the whistle on Wirecard and had been in contact with Andriesz in the weeks prior to his death in Thailand.

Andriesz first filed reports with the FCA about BGC Partners, the broker where Lutnick was CEO, in 2018, after he had refused to sign off on accounts and was later fired for refusing to accept medical advice that he should stay off work. Earlier this year he uncovered evidence suggesting that Lutnick had undeclared business ties with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and had allegedly made an offer, which didn't materialise, to go into business with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Lutnick has said he had no “personal or professional relationship” with Epstein. BGC said it had long disputed Andriesz’s allegations but was “sorry to hear this tragic news and expresses our condolences to Mr Andriesz’s family”.

In response to Andriesz's accusations that the FCA failed to provide sufficient protection and anonymity during his decade-long fight with BGC, the regulator has apologised and said it will seek "to learn any lessons for the future". But MPs aren't convinced that's enough. "An inquiry under the auspices of the FCA cannot be construed as truly independent or sufficient given the seriousness of recent events," said John McDonnell MP, head of the APPG on Investment Fraud and Fairer Financial Services.

The FCA received 333 whistleblowing reports in the second quarter of this year, and about one in seven of the cases it closed led to enforcement or similar action. The number of reports brought to the regulator last year increased 22%.

High-profile cases of whistleblower neglect have permeated Britain's public consciousness, so it's unsurprising that MPs are making noises. The subpostmasters. The Thirlwall inquiry. HBOS. (The latter is an inquiry into whether Lloyds covered up fraud which has taken nine and a half years – and counting). The reputational, not to mention personal, toll of these has been deep. And yet many companies still aren't moving to tackle the problem at root.

“Boards need to realise that whistleblowing is really early risk detection,” says Gill, who after exposing the €24bn Wirecard fraud has founded a platform for governance advice. “Even if they’re a horrible company, it’s in your interest to find out first and do something about it.”

He points to the effectiveness of the EU's whistleblowing directive, which requires companies with 50 or more staff, and all financial firms, to run confidential reporting channels. Companies have seven days to acknowledge a report, and three months to respond substantively with how they've handled the whistleblower, even if that person is anonymous.

Compared with the UK, Europe “treats it more like a governance problem than an employee dispute”, says Gill. “The burden of proof is reversed. It’s on the company to prove that it didn’t retaliate against the whistleblower – not the other way around.”

The alternative model is the US, where corporate whistleblowers receive rewards from regulators – in some cases in the hundreds of millions of dollars – if information they provide leads to sanction. Since 2012 more than 700 UK-based whistleblowers, including Andriesz, have taken advantage of the fact. Gill is sceptical. He says: "What I'm more of

---

'The FCA can blame whatever they want... we still should never have come to this kind of outcome' Pav Gill, lawyer

a fan of is legal protection, legal costs being covered, counselling, psychological help, assistance in finding another job."

If reform of the UK's whistleblowing regime is genuinely on the cards, then it should be implemented swiftly, because soon regulators may be dealing with a whole new threat.

“AI agents have no moral compunction; they’re outcome-driven. And we’ve already seen experiments where they are ratting on each other. If companies can’t deal with humans in a whistleblowing setting, then good luck dealing with the future,” says Gill.

US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick with an employee at the BGC offices in New York last month. Noam Galai/Getty Images for Cantor Fitzgerald

Any Other Business

UK's Bangkok missions: debt, aid and tax havens

In their first double act on the international stage the chancellor, John Healey and foreign secretary Ed Miliband are this week off to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings in Bangkok with big, but different, missions.

Last time the annual meetings were held in Thailand, in 1991, that country was starting to build up the unsustainable foreign debt that eventually led to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Now it's the world's richest nations adding debt at an alarming rate. Healey's US and (protest-battered) French counterparts may attract more attention. But with a tricky first budget coming up, and financial market jitters about national debt, the chancellor's priority will be to convince the smart money that he can be trusted to make Britain's public finances sound again.

Miliband, who, unusually for a foreign secretary, says he will personally lead Britain's role at the World Bank to help push through long-overdue reforms, is expected to work behind the scenes building support for two initiatives the UK wants at the heart of its leadership of the G20 next year. One is a big international conference on illicit finance (tax havens, for example), rescheduled from this year. The other is an increase in lending by multilateral development banks, after reports have shown that, with modest rule changes, they could lend developing countries up to \$1tn more than they currently do without any additional capital.

The G20 has lacked momentum under the US leadership, which ends in December with a summit at Donald Trump's golf club in Miami, to which he has invited Vladimir Putin. Bangkok is a chance to lay the groundwork for Britain to help shape a more positive development agenda for the “post-aid” era.

By Matthew Bishop

Ed Miliband and John Healey will make their debut as a double act on the world stage this week. Andalou/Getty Images

New hope for Oxbridge link

The idea of creating an economic corridor between Oxford and Cambridge has been championed by politicians for at least a decade. But progress has been slow, especially given the potential economic benefits claimed for expanding the British part of Europe's Silicon Valley. The Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster says a proactive approach could double the region's projected growth by 2050.

Andy Burnham's northwards shift in economic policy has prompted talk that the Oxford-Cambridge arc may be downgraded at a crucial moment. The diplomatic fallout of the Manchester City scandal has raised the possibility that the

United Arab Emirates, home to the club's Abu Dhabi owners, may drop plans to invest in the corridor. According to the Telegraph, the UAE has privately warned ministers that future investment is at risk.

So news that the government is “promising to push on with linking up Oxford and Cambridge”, as reported by the Financial Times, is most welcome. Hopes are high that new money for key projects will have pride of place at the forthcoming UK-UAE investment summit, assuming it goes ahead. There is a significant opportunity cost for failing to move faster on providing infrastructure the corridor needs, such as improved rail links.

Ravi

Mhatre

COMMENT

If Britain loves its tech talent, it must set it free

In Silicon Valley, employees can quit their workplace on a Friday and start a new company the following Monday. There is no lengthy gardening leave, no protracted negotiation, just quick and efficient talent movement.

believed that stockmarket-listed firms would bring an end to family capitalism. But short-termism in the stock market, plus families figuring out ways to minimise the sort of wealth-destroying internal battles that made the TV drama Succession such great viewing (limiting the roles of family members relative to professionals, for instance), means that business dynasties as a category are still thriving.

supermarkets and the Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy chain. Its British arm is the majority owner of Associated British Foods.

The Westons are generally viewed as competent owner-managers. The dynasty used to own Selfridges: it revived the firm and banked a big profit on its sale nearly five years ago. The new ownership promises long-term stability and significant investment that, if delivered, bodes well for the prospects of Boots and its new CEO, Alex Baldock.

As with any major change, there will probably be some concern. Tech firms can be notoriously twitchy about their intellectual property and the investment they have put into their teams. But after a career backing many of the world's greatest founders, I am certain of one thing. The places that build the next great companies are not always the ones with the best universities or the deepest pools of capital. They are often the spaces where talented people are free to walk out and start something new when they need to.

This is a quick win for Sycamore Partners, a private-equity firm that bought control of the Walgreens Boots Alliance barely a year ago. It also ends the 20-year involvement in the British firm of husband-and-wife dealmakers Stefano Pessina and Ornella Barra, who originally merged Boots with Walgreens and then missed a juicy exit when a potential offer from KKR in 2019 came to nothing.

Sale of Boots to Westons shows capitalism is still a family affair

The UK has now moved to limit the use of non-compete clauses, which prevent former employees

The City of London had high hopes that Boots would help cure whatever is ailing the London Stock Exchange. A successful IPO, perhaps as soon as early next year, would send a message of recovery for a market that has suffered from a series of high-profile delistings.

It was not to be. On Wednesday, the pharmacy and retail chain was sold to a very different kind of owner: dynastic capitalism. The Weston family, together with Canadian investor Fairfax Financial Holdings, will pay about \$8.9bn (£6.7bn) for Boots. In Canada the Weston family owns the Loblaws

from founding or joining a competitor. It's a step that could help ensure the country continues to be at the forefront of global tech innovation and growth.

During the 1960s, academics

Few places evidence this more than Silicon Valley. From the 1970s, its success wasn't just the product of Stanford or the defence money that poured into the Bay Area during the Cold War. It actually had a lot to do with Boston. When compared with their western counterparts, firms in Massachusetts had the same calibre of higher education and share of defence contracts, but most were chaining their talent to their desks.

To many this was sensible. If it was difficult for staff to leave, they would stay and work as they always had. What it crushed was room for growth, creative thinking and excitement. California took a different path and reaped the rewards.

I believe Britain has the raw material for success in abundance. It has already produced AI labs that have pushed the frontier and attracted talented people who don't want to relocate to San Francisco.

It seems every week there is news of serious funding rounds and new companies coming out of stealth – officially revealing their existence – with fresh ideas and grand ambitions. Banning non-compete clauses can turbocharge that trajectory.

In a more fluid labour market the best people will want to come to Britain, and in doing so the ecosystem around every great lab and firm will grow. Graduates will have more opportunities and seasoned talent can apply their skills and experience to new roles. More investment and backing will come from VCs and beyond.

Meta employees at its Menlo Park headquarters in California.

Britain has the talent; the government is now serious about setting it free. Having rightly moved to ban non-competes, ministers should consider going the whole hog on restrictive covenants. Do that, and it would be one of the biggest wins for British innovation in a generation.

Silicon Valley didn't become Silicon Valley by making it slightly cheaper to hold people in place. It became Silicon Valley by letting them go and trusting in the collective ambition of brilliant minds. Britain can do the same.

Ravi Mhatre is co-founder of Lightspeed, a global venture capital firm which is an early investor in AI companies including Anthropic, Ineffable Intelligence, Mistral, Glean, Abridge and Reflection AI

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A PRAYER

THE BIODIVERSITY ISSUE

NICK HAYES

A radicals' guide to The Wind in the Willows

KATHERINE RUNDELL

Napoleon's Orangutan and other stories

Agenda

The sharpest writing every Sunday for arts, science, books and ideas

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Agenda 2-7

\- In Real Life Finn Blythe on the forensic work of Tate Britain's art conservators; Dan Richards packs his whites for a Corfu cricket odyssey; Lotte Brundle on the master of Microsoft Excel; Lily Isaacs attends the Mama Mia! spin-off show-cum-dinner party

• Interview Frieze director Eva Langret

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Critics 20-29

Susannah Clapp on James Graham's play about John Maynard Keynes, The Standard of Living

Laura Cumming reviews The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain

\- Kitty Empire sees the Strokes live in London

Wendy Ide on Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning

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Biodiversity special 8-19

Nature Simon Barnes on being a naturalist in an age of extinction

\- Poetry Simon Armitage interviewed by Tom Gatti – plus, eight of the poet laureate’s new nature poems

Essays Author Katherine Rundell on the secret lives of animals

\- Reportage Right to Roam campaigner Nick Hayes’s radical guide to The Wind in the Willows

John Naughton "What are universities for?" is a question AI can help answer

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Books 30-37

\- Tim Adams on Blockers, about Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and the damage it caused

Anthony Quinn on Deep into the Sixties, a myth-busting delve into British history by David Kynaston

\- Stephanie Merritt reviews Barbara Kingsolver's music-inspired Partita

\- Randa Abdel-Fattah talks about Gaza and her new novel, Discipline

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Puzzles & Television 38-48

\- Everyman crossword, sudoku, Gemelo, chess, guess the picture, cinema connect, Lexipedia quiz and Goldilocks crossword

The week's television and radio highlights

Barbara Ellen on a new TV version of horror classic Carrie

Follow us on Instagram @ObsNewReview; email us at review@observer.co.uk

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Contributors

Simon Armitage (p12) is the poet laureate. His books of nature poems include Blossomise and Dwell; his new translation of Gilgamesh is out now.

Katherine Rundell (p14) is the author of the Impossible Creatures series and a new collection of essays, Napoleon's Orangutan.

Nick Hayes (p16) is a writer, illustrator and Right to Roam campaigner. He is the author of The Book of Trespass and The Medicine Tree.

• Lily Isaacs (p4, p6) writes about media and culture for The Observer. In today's paper she also asks the question: "Is my dog far right?"

Simon Barnes (p10) lives on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. His latest book is How to Fly: Taking Wing With Birds, Bats, Insects and Humans.

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The big picture

Photographer Tim Walker celebrates queer activism, solidarity and love through the lens of his lifelong fascination with fairies

It feels like a glorious rebuke to any use of the word “fairy” as a homophobic slur. When Tim Walker was growing up in Surrey in the 1970s, he loved fairies and the world they conjured up for him. It was, he writes, “a place to which I could escape in my head and be my true self. As a boy, this dream palace materialised into reality as I went about decorating the garden with shells, floral garlands – pretty, gay things – imagining romances and adventures in my little red wigwam... Fairyland, in one form or another, was always there for me.”

The bullying he endured at school forced him to internalise this magical world, and with it his sexuality, but later, as he became an much sought-after fashion photographer, Walker was able to tap into it on a regular basis – “I got to run away to Fairyland every day,” as he puts it. Now, in his joyous new show at the National Portrait Gallery, which celebrates queer activism, solidarity and love over the past 56 years of Walker’s life, with a starry cast including Ian McKellen, Miriam Margolyes, Frank Ocean and Lady Gaga, the fairies are allowed to run riot.

This image, entitled Fairy

Parade, was constructed from portraits that Walker printed and overlaid with organic matter and creepy-crawlies from his London garden, with leaves, flowers and butterfly wings tactfully positioned to preserve his subjects' modesty. (Not every image in the show, which builds to an erotic climax in the final room, is quite so delicately censored.) The fairies of his childhood were "mystical, cheeky and rebellious," Walker recalls, and those traits are embodied here by mostly queer models, performers and artists including Harry Keita, Bolly

Illusion and a wild-eyed Yos Clark (second from right).

"It's taken me a while to inhabit the arcadia that is Fairyland," Walker writes in the exhibition's book-length catalogue, "but, by getting gayer as I've got older, I've finally settled in. I've never been happier and freer than I am now." This image underlines his point with puckishness and uncontained glee. Killian Fox

Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 7 February 2027

Fairyland

Parade (l-r):

Joe Sweeney,

Matthew Keller,

Harry Keita,

Bolly Illusion,

James Corbin,

Oliver-Bijan

Daryoush,

Jack Newman,

Yos Clark and

Joseph O'Rourke,

London, 2023.

Tim Walker

In Real Life

Observations & scenes from the world beyond your phone screen

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THE ART WORLD Up close and personal

Under a microscope the size of a desk lamp, a small still life by the Bloomsbury Group painter Duncan Grant blooms into

landscape. Amy Griffin, a painting conservator at Tate Britain, eases the lens – a Hirox, capable of magnifying over 100 times and more – across the surface, and brushstrokes swell into ridges, paper fibres rise like mown grass. At this magnification, you are closer to the painting than Grant ever was.

Griffin's painting studio is a spacious, light-filled room in Tate's conservation department. It consists of five specialist teams. Their collective task, in the words of head of conservation Louise Lawson, is “to care, preserve, and provide access to Tate’s artworks and collections”. Their job “is not necessarily to fix a work,” says Lawson, but “to think about the artist’s intention, and ensure it can be shown safely and preserved into the future.” A conservator’s first task is to listen to the work of art, establish its needs with care and empathy, then establish the best treatment plan.

This autumn the whole department is bending towards a single event: Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury, which opens at Tate Britain in November. Bell and Grant were at the centre of the Bloomsbury Group, the early 20th-century circle of artists and writers (Bell's sister was Virginia Woolf) as celebrated now for their bohemian lifestyle as for their work. The show is a vast undertaking: it brings together more than 300 works, paintings, works on paper, and the highlight – a first ever relocation of the artists' studio.

from their East Sussex farmhouse, Charleston, where Bell and Grant lived and worked. For the conservators it is a rare chance to look, in great depth and detail, at artists who created work across multiple media, from paintings and drawings to painted furniture, fabric and ceramics.

Nowhere is that closeness more affecting than in a pair of paintings Griffin has been studying. In 1914, Bell and Grant decided to paint the mantelpiece in the front room at 46 Gordon Square, Bell's home in London, laden with objects and flowers, sitting side by side. Grant's version, The Mantelpiece, built up from collage; Bell's, Still Life on Corner of a Mantelpiece, pared almost to abstraction. When conservation scientists compared the two, the same pigments turned up in both, and for Griffin that

overlap is unexpectedly intimate. “I like to think of them sitting there,” she says, “sharing tube paints but with their separate palettes... It’s very romantic.”

To read a painting this closely is detective work, and the equipment would not look out of place in a forensics lab. Take Grant's Dancers, painted around 1910-12, a ring of near-naked figures probably inspired by Matisse's 1909 work Dance and one of the earliest British forays into modernist painting. Under x-ray it reveals itself as a palimpsest, every abandoned decision still faintly legible beneath the last: Grant appears to have first painted his dancers wholly nude before adding clothes, and one figure's legs, once set apart, have been swung across each other. Where the x-ray catches lead white, infrared picks out the carbon of an underdrawing; and a cross-section – a fleck of paint “smaller than a full stop”, set sideways in resin and polished – lets conservation scientists read a painting's lavers

"like a cake", ground and paint and varnish stacked in order. Together they build a picture of how a thing was made which instructs conservators on how to proceed.

Once treatment begins, the touch is astonishingly light: small tests with a

\- twist of cotton wool and water-based solutions, the lifting of yellowed

1950s varnish, a raised flake coaxed back down with a reversible adhesive. Everything a conservator adds is designed to be undone. Oil paints are eschewed in favour of conservation-grade materials that glow under ultraviolet, so their work stays stable and legible for whoever comes next. “When you look at a painting under UV,” Griffin says, “you’ll always be able to tell where we’ve been.”

and Katie Leung as Penelope. It was a magical performance, the silhouetted audience listening, rapt, as cicadas sang unseen in the trees and the Ionian Sea, silvered by the rising moon, shushed on the beach nearby.

Arantza Dobbels Busto has been readying dozens of scraps of Bell and Grant's daily life from the Tate archive, letters, a train ticket, postcards Grant sent from Italy. The paper conservator's favourite is a small sketch on blue paper, among the first known images of Charleston, drawn by Bell on the back of a card to Grant in 1916, its walled garden and pond already unmistakable.

The exhibition's boldest feat is the relocation and installation of an entire room. Bell and Grant's studio at Charleston, its walls, doors and furniture painted top to bottom by the people who lived there, is being lifted piece by piece from the Sussex farmhouse and rebuilt at Millbank. Every organic object must be acclimatised for 10 days in a temperature-controlled chamber at a secret off-site facility, eased from their Sussex home to tighter gallery conditions so nothing cracks. Then come the pest treatments: deep-freezing, or anoxia, the slow starving of oxygen that, sculpture conservator Gates Sofer says, “kills any potential pests”. Nothing about their art was precious; everything about caring for it is. Finn Blythe

Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury is at Tate Britain, London, SW1P, from 12 November to 11 April 2027

In paper conservation, the intimacy is of a different order.

Homer's descriptions of Scheria, where Odysseus is washed ashore and given help by Princess Nausica, map exactly on to Corfu, many believe, adding to the emotion of the night. Earlier in the week, two massive thunderstorms had flashed across the island. As they rolled through I pictured Poseidon, nemesis of Odysseus, making his feelings known about the festival's decision to dramatise the blinding of his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus, as its grand finale.

This year, in venues across Corfu Town, at the annual literary festival, audiences attended events about anchovies, sisterhood,

sailing and butterflies; we heard about Greece's place in the New Byzantine order; and there were talks about big tech, spies and black comedy – not that those last three are so easy to tell apart these days.

But I knew the real reason the skies had opened: the deluge had been inevitable from the moment, a few days before, when – in an astonishing act of hubris – I'd packed my cricket whites.

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THE SPORTING LIFE Cricket Odyssey

The final event of the week was a candlelit reading of Homer's Odyssey with David Harewood as Odysseus

Corfu's relationship with cricket goes back over 200 years. On St George's Day, 23 April, 1823, a match was held on the island between officers of the Royal Navy and those of the British garrison. Long after the British had left, the game remained a beloved local tradition, and today Corfu is at the heart of Greek cricket, home to numerous local clubs, a schools programme and an active cricket association.

Teams travel from all over the world to play here. In years past I've walked out to bat (briefly) in matches held in Corfu Town's beautiful main square – the only cricket pitch within a Unesco world heritage site. Who wouldn't want to spend an afternoon playing on such an afternoon playing on such a field of dreams – between the old Venetian fort and the handsome esplanade of cafes that acts as boundary, bench and bar?

The team I play for (occasionally, enthusiastically, ineptly) is the Authors – a nomadic assembly of wordsmiths of unreliable sporting prowess founded in 1899 by prominent writers including Arthur Conan Doyle (a first-class sportsman), PG Wodehouse (good all-rounder), AA Milne (solid fielder), and JM Barrie (infamously awful).

Everyone has a moment when they discover their calling. At university, Dang discovered his love of Excel

When in the UK, the Authors have a core team of useful cricketers – bestselling sporty types; further afield things are a little more needs—must and that's why I sometimes get a game on Corfu.

In the run up to this year's festival I'd had images of standing in the slips with novelist Sofka Zinovieff and commiserating with the geneticist Adam Rutherford as another eminently catchable edge flies past his gloves; and of course playing a Joe Root-esque innings against a youthful Corfiot bowling attack before raising my bat to appreciative applause from my peers, the voice of festival co-founder Annabelle Louvros clearly audible above the cheers: "We love you, Dan!" But no. The ultimate umpires of Mount Olympus turned down my appeals and my whites stayed in my baggage, unworn. Still, listening to David Harewood's Odysseus tell of his epic travails gave me hope that things may yet come right. As our hero vanquished the Cyclops, so might I, one day, execute that perfect Corfu cover drive I play so often in my dreams. Dan Richards

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OFFICE LIFE Spreadsheet olympics

They call him the Excel Bully. To many, Ha Dang is just another financial modelling consultant, but to a select few, he is

better known as the Microsoft Excel UK champion. Having won first place in the final last year, the prize for which was a ticket to the world championships in Las Vegas, this year Dang is fighting to retain his national title – and his WWE-style champion's belt.

Everyone has a moment when they discover their calling. At university Dang discovered his love of spreadsheets. “I have always liked things neatly put in a box, and want to categorise things if I can,” he says. “I love the fact that Excel is a very neat grid, and when I first started using it I fell in love with that structure immediately,” he says. “I do feel the pressure, but if anyone can beat me, I’ll be happy for them, because they will have put a lot of work and dedication into it.”

The conference room in London where the final is taking place could be any ordinary office, if it wasn't for the heavy metal music blaring out. There are more women than I was expecting. One has had an Excel-themed manicure especially for the event. A man is wearing a shirt patterned with the Excel logo, which reads: "Freak in the sheets". A fellow competitor tells me: "He tried to wear it on his wedding day, but his wife said no."

Among the guests is Diarmuid Early, reigning world champion. As an Irish-American who lives in the US, he cannot compete himself, but will be in Vegas later this year, fighting to keep his title. His laptop looks like it has been in the wars. The control key appears to have suffered most.

"There's something about the intersection of Excel, with its grey accounting associations, and the tournament in Las Vegas, with its cheering crowd, that I think just tickles people," he tells me. Today's competition is relaxed, but there are still plenty of pre-battle jitters in the room – although this could be down to copious caffeine consumption. "If you work in finance, they say the world runs on Excel and coffee," says Hadyn Wiseman, a corporate development associate at a food company. He has an energy

Illustrations by Oscar Ingham drink lined up beside his laptop.

Wiseman explains how the UK final works. Competitors have to answer a set of questions in three files, known as “cases”. They have 30 minutes for each. Every case has seven levels and there are 20 questions per level. Each case is themed. Today’s first is called On the Road, and follows a night out on the town in Las Vegas. The second is a spy-themed case titled James Frond. The third is called Mind the Gap and is based on the London Underground. In each file there are colourful maps, board games and other creative puzzles.

Lara Holding-Jones has written two cases for this year's qualifying round. In the daytime she is a data strategist for HR teams. She is also eight months pregnant, though many of the men at the final haven't congratulated her, despite her massive bump and "Baby on board" badge. She thinks this is because they are too focused on the task at hand.

“In terms of a gender split, it’s pretty stacked for the boys, but from an inclusion perspective everyone’s amazing,” she says. One of the cases she created was themed around International Women’s Day.

I am in the crowd among the Excel Wags (posh and specs). Two of the organisers provide live commentary

– the only noise to be heard above the furious typing. As the rounds progress, the frontrunners become easy to spot. Dang is like a magician, often several questions ahead of the rest. No one is surprised to see him crowned the winner for the second year in a row. “The stakes are so much higher in Vegas,” he says, “but last year it was really fun, because I was able to meet and talk to so many people who share the same language as me. We are all as nerdy as each other.” Lotte Brundle

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ON THE STAGE Here we go again

P

lease don't touch the actors," a security guard says to me at the door of Nikos Taverna, a full-scale replica of a Greek tavern buried deep inside the O2 arena at Greenwich. “We say that to everyone...” he winks.

Behind us is an empty Wetherspoons and eerie children's bungee jump apparatus. Inside is another world: the temperature a balmy 27C, energetic Greek music blasting from speakers, artificial

bougainvillea, women in sequins dancing and flirting with miked-up waiters. Meze is being dolloped on to the plates of hundreds of eager fans, and someone plants a prosecco in my hand during an emphatic chorus of “Kalimera!”

This is Mamma Mia! The Party, the latest addition to Abba's endless empire. The story goes that band member Björn Ulvaeus noticed audiences leaving the stage show euphoric and having nowhere to go. He wondered: "What if this could continue somewhere else?"

In 2017, after opening to sold-out success in Stockholm, Ulvaeus turned his attention to London and tried to set up shop in the appropriately named Waterloo. Posters plastered around the neighbourhood warned of a dystopian future – “Five hundred drunk revellers will spill on to these streets singing Dancing Queen” – and they riled up enough opposition to shut plans down.

Ulvaeus was not deterred. Five hundred revellers singing Dancing Queen now interrupt the peaceful evenings of Greenwich twice a day

– there are matinee and evening performances. Soon the show will expand to Medlock Square, a venue between Co-op Live and the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. Now could really be a smart time for Man City to pivot to Abba.

As we clap along to Money, Money, Money here, one diner downs her cocktail in scorn: "Well, it does cost bloody £200 to be here." Economists have reported that Abba Voyage alone – the party's holographic cousin – has contributed over £2bn to the British economy.

A loose narrative, created by Sandi Toksvig, is imposed upon this evening's lucrative fun. We are introduced to the pretty blond Kate, who tells us she was a costume designer on Mamma Mia! the movie who fell head-over-heels in love with a local restaurateur on set and never left the island of Skopelos.

“So what was it like snogging Pierce Brosnan?” asks the restaurant’s cook, played with formidable vocal power by X Factor season 10 winner Sam Bailey. Kate smirks: “Oh, I barely remember it... we were all having too much fun!”

Of course there's trouble in paradise. Kate's bad boy English nephew has stolen the heart of her husband's daughter, Konstantina. Her husband – Nikos – is furious. His own mother observes proceedings, talking disapprovingly in Greek. Cue: Does Your Mother Know.

There is something so infectious embedded into the DNA of Abba's songs that even as the plot grows more tenuous, we are always grateful to get into what really matters: the music. As Mamma Mia begins – recast here for some reason as an anti-smoking song – one man near me calls his friend on FaceTime screaming with delight.

The theorist Susan Sontag says that “the whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious”. And so even when the tragedy comes – Kate feels unwanted and frustrated – we know everything is going to be OK. After all, it’s Friday night and the lights are low. Lily Isaacs

STILL SHOWING Observer critics' takes on the events not to miss

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Art

At British Landscapes: A Sense of Place, which runs at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until 1 November, “we have monstrous trees, terrain that is almost fleshlike, landscapes that seem post-apocalyptic”. Tara Joshi

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TV

The Wargame, “a crisis simulation repurposed as a geopolitical thriller, is set in the near future, where real-world former senior politicians sit around a table in a darkened meeting of the Cobra emergency response committee, dealing with a mounting crisis involving a Russian attack on UK soil”. It’s still showing on Sky One/Now. Barbara Ellen

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Pop

"Tonight's musical menu features jazz, new jack swing-

infused R&B and operatic passages, including some truly stunning, lower-register forays into classical Spanish forms." Jill Scott's UK tour continues at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 13 and 14 October. Kitty Empire

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NOW BOOKING Books

Tickets for the Cambridge literary festival, taking place at venues across the city on 21 and 22 November, are now on sale. Highlights include events with biographer Hermione Lee and poet Alice Oswald.

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Arts

David Byrne – Talking Heads co-founder and renowned multimedia artist – comes to the UK to present his new book, Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up. He visits London, Brighton, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh, 8-13 November.

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Classical

Chamber ensemble

Manchester Collective present

Black Gold in Nottingham,

Leeds, Manchester and London,

25 November–6 December. The audiovisual piece, by Luke Mombrea, traces the history of a disastrous oil well fire as the collective morphs into a heavy-

bass ensemble.

Eva Langret Curator, 43

The Frieze director on reassessing the canon, what people get wrong about art fairs and why Zadie Smith is a source of inspiration

Eva Langret is the director of Frieze across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She oversees Frieze London, which opens next week. Langret grew up in the suburbs of Paris, before moving to London to complete master's degrees in both art history and archeology. She previously worked at the recently closed Tiwani Contemporary, a gallery dedicated to African art. She was appointed director of Frieze in 2019, promising that the fair would do a better job of reflecting “London’s diverse artistic community”. She presided over the fair’s first ever virtual iteration during the pandemic and has improved ways into the event for smaller galleries and artists.

'Art excites me':

Eva Langret.

Portrait by

Suki Dhanda for

The Observer

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When did you first discover art?

When did you first discover art:

I had a very happy childhood. I had easy access to all the museums in Paris, and my parents used to take me there a lot. That's how it all started. Then I used to go as a teenager and draw in the Louvre with my friends. There was a feeling of being surrounded by art and being at peace in the museum. Art helps me recentre and refocus my ideas. There is just so much noise and so much slop; art helps me zoom in.

---

How important is easy access to museums?

I would love for museums to stay free. This is how my love story with art started, by being able to access museums freely. The opportunities that it creates by simply exposing young folks to art are incredible; it's where many professional career stories start. It's really, really important that museums stay free.

---

What do people get wrong about Frieze?

The greatest misunderstanding is the idea that it's not for everyone. It is a platform to buy for some visitors. It is a platform to work for curators and arts professionals. But it is first and foremost a place where you can come and enjoy art from all over the world in a way that you wouldn't be able to do in any other context. You don't get to see 300 galleries together in one place from all over the world anywhere other than an art fair.

Should art have a deeper meaning?

Art always has a deeper meaning.

It's like a mirror to the world, first

of all. It's really a way for artists

to talk to us about how they're

experiencing the world. It's about us

looking at the world through their

eyes, and when we do that, we're

sort of looking back on ourselves.

I think about it also as a way of

producing knowledge that's neither

science nor the humanities. To me,

every single artwork is a thesis.

The subject of that thesis could be

anything from colour to the recent

history of Germany, for example.

What art has changed you? One artist I love, Lawrence

Abu Hamdan, makes sound investigations. [His audio pieces] start with listening and sometimes they might end up being an exhibition, but some of his investigations might end up helping trials and human rights cases. He's done an incredible piece about borders called the 45th Parallel. The piece is about a library that's located on the border of Canada and the US. It also tells the story of a cross-border murder between the US and Mexico – the legal implications of that assassination but also the absurdity of it all, of us drawing those lines and killing people for crossing them. I think about the piece often now with what's going on, with people travelling across borders and how they're treated, but also about how arbitrary and lethal a border can be.

How much further does the art world have to go in addressing inequality? We certainly have come a long way. There have been many exercises in reassessing the canon, reassessing who's held the power, how art history has been written: looking back, thinking of the artists who were erased from history, either because they were women or because they were queer. If we're looking at women artists, there's been a lot of conversation, but the numbers are so staggeringly terrifying. You're looking at trying to fix hundreds of years of art history and acquisitions and exhibitions, so there's still a very long way to go.

---

Who inspires you?

I think of Zadie Smith always, whether it's on art or on culture or our relationship with technology. She always makes me think, but she also makes me act. There's a certain clarity in her writing that spurs me into action. And Ta'Nehisi Coates also on the state of the world; he's someone who has the utmost clarity. I want to focus on those people who can help me tune out that noise and refocus. I meditate. I walk. I exercise a lot. I do need to empty my brain and gain that clarity.

You don't see 300 galleries together in one place from all over the world anywhere other than an art fair

---

What excites you?

This is going to sound like I don't have much else going on other than art in my life, but I don't, and so art is really what excites me. Seeing a great exhibition excites me. Meeting artists excites me. Spending time in the studio, that's a huge privilege. I'm trying to be as open and porous as I possibly can be to new ideas, new names. Therefore I can always be excited. I used to draw and paint, but I realised early enough that I wasn't very talented as an artist, so I didn't pursue it. I made it the work of my life to help artists and creatives have a platform.

Interview by Lily Isaacs

Frieze London runs from 14 to 18 October at the Regent's Park

"RADIOHEAD MEETS SHAKESPEARE IN A STUNNING COLLISION OF WORLDS"

ROLLING STONE UK

HAMLET HAIL TO THE THIEF

BY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

ADAPTED BY

CHRISTINE JONES WITH STEVEN HOGGETT

ORCHESTRATIONS BY

THOM YORKE

DIRECTED BY

STEVEN HOGGETT AND CHRISTINE JONES

MUSIC BY

RADIOHEAD

STRICTLY LIMITED SEASON

BARBICAN CENTRE

31 OCT 2026 - 23 JAN 2027

hamlethailtothethief.com

A NATURALIST IN THE AGE OF EXTINCTION

Next week, at the latest UN conference on protecting biodiversity, Cop17, delegates will discuss again the goal of ‘halting nature loss by 2030’. Introducing this special issue on the wonder of our fellow animals and what can be done to protect them, Simon Barnes describes a lifelong passion for non-human life

I knew about biodiversity as an intellectual concept, of course I did. But there was a day when a leap of understanding told me what it means in my heart and my \_\_\_\_ It would in my heart and my soul and my guts. It was mid-May 1990, in the lanes around Minsmere nature reserve in Suffolk: the day I got the hang of birdsong.

We were doing an ornithological survey. By the time I was heading home I was able to pick out willow warbler, chiffchaff and whitethroat thanks to the patience of deputy warden Rob Macklin. Suddenly the countryside was echoing not just with life, but with many different forms of life. Diversity was no longer an interesting scientific phenomenon. It was the meaning of life.

Birdwatching is a quest for biodiversity: an attempt to grasp the ineffable vastness of non-human life – and by doing so, to find a deeper understanding of humanity. We are not alone and we never have been.

As a boy, I would look though The Observer's Book of Birds and marvel at the dramatic species such as gannet and raven and peregrine. But as I got towards the back, I'd find myself bemused by all those warblers. They all looked the same.

Perhaps, I wondered treacherously, they really were the same. Perhaps these so-called different species were confections and errors of the human mind, invented out of pedantry with the sole purpose of confusing beginners. What did it matter if it was a willow warbler or a chiffchaff?

But then I got the hang of birdsong and when the wind is northerly I can tell a garden warbler from a blackcap. Which, by the way, is quite difficult. For me, the dawn chorus in May is not a single phenomenon called birdsong: it's a complex polyphony involving many species. I've just checked my notebook: this year, I identified 21 species with my ears alone between four and five in the morning, including my neighbour's peacocks.

At first glance, a willow warbler looks identical to a chiffchaff. There are differences of leg colour and the length of primary feathers, but you have to be a good birder to tell them apart. Yet we humans have a greater percentage of our DNA in common with our closest relative, the chimpanzee, than these two bird species have with each other.

A willow warbler doesn't want to mate with a chiffchaff any more than you want to mate with a chimpanzee: and either pursuit would be equally unprofitable in terms of propagation of genes. The gulf is expressed in song: the chiffchaff says his own name while a willow warblers lisps sweetly down the scale. No listener, bird or human, could confuse them in a million years: precisely the reason they sing.

And that, in a handful of notes, is biodiversity. Birds are a portal to this eternal mystery. They give you diversity on, if you like, a human scale. In this country, if you can identify 100 bird species you're not bad, 200 is quite good, 300 very good, 400 obsessive.

But it's when you move into other taxa that your head begins to spin with the vertigo of true diversity. Life works by making not hundreds but thousands and thousands of different kinds of creatures – closed communities that can only mate and reproduce with their own kind – that we call species.

The best way of grasping this larger concept of biodiversity is not to visit a rainforest. Rainforests are wonderful, but understanding their diversity is a slow and subtle process. For instant enlightenment, put on a dive mask and plunge your head into the sea above a coral reef. The first time I did this, I lasted about two seconds: I came up spluttering and gasping in disbelief. That's kind of the point: in order to exist, it all has to be much, much too much.

You can get something of the same experience in this country with a moth trap. This involves a mercury vapour bulb and a box that works like a lobster pot: easily in, but not so easily out. You fire this up when you go to bed and the next morning it's Christmas Day: see what Santa has brought you in the way of Lepidoptera. Examine them, appreciate them and then release them with great care.

You can't believe that such things exist: so fine, so easily found and above all, so many different kinds. The one word "moth" is at once revealed as hopelessly inadequate. The first time I used mine, there was an elephant hawk-moth right on the top: so big it was almost an honorary bird, glowing in subtle shades of pink and green. There

The UK ranks 189th out of 240 globally for biodiversity, with only about 50% of its original nature remaining.

were many others, including garden tiger, privet hawk-moth, buff ermine, common emerald and red underwing.

There are about 2,500 species of moth in the UK, each one at least as distinct from every other as you are from a chimpanzee. There are more than 4,000 beetle species here, more than 7,000 of hymenoptera

\- bees, ants and wasps - an even more species of diptera (flies).

But that's nothing. We're actually pretty thin on biodiversity in these northerly latitudes. Some worldwide numbers, all approximate by necessity: 6,500 species of mammal, 11,000 birds, 85,000 molluscs, 100,000 arachnids (spiders, scorpions and mites) and more than a million insects, of which 400,000 are beetles.

Old story: when the scientist JBS Haldane was asked what he could deduce about the nature of the creator from a lifelong study

1 in 6 Nearly one in six species (16%) in Great Britain is threatened with extinction.

the creator from a lifelong study of his creatures, he replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles." Or to put that another way, an overwhelming lust for biodiversity.

Biodiversity is nothing less than the way life works. But about 10,000 years ago, we humans invented agriculture and decided that the planet would work much better – at least for us – in a series of monocultures. Diversity must be reduced to a minimum: what matters today is sugar cane, wheat, rice, maize and spuds; along with a selected few non-human animal species: chickens, cattle, sheep. Plus, of course, the domination of one single species: 8.3 billion humans right now, predicted to rise to 10.3 billion by 2080.

And yet, on the rare occasions we come to discuss the conservation of biodiversity, we talk as though we were doing non-human life a

favour. The fact is that looking

43%

Severe drops are documented across major taxa, including birds (43% at risk).

after the biodiversity of the planet is about as altruistic as looking after a goose that lays golden eggs.

I could talk about clean fresh water, or good breathable air, or the prevention of floods – but let's just talk about pollination. Every

third mouthful of food you take is the result of pollination by non-human species.

19%

Examples: apples, pears, raspberries, strawberries, plums, cherries, beans, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers, coffee, chocolate, vanilla. Plants need pollinators to produce seeds to grow carrots, onions and cabbages. So let's move on to almonds.

In Central Valley, California, 1.4 million acres are given up to almond production. About 80% of the world's almonds come from this valley; in 2019 the export value was \$4.9bn. There's no room for anything else, and with all the pesticides they've got rid of all the natural pollinators. So every February they bus in honeybees: two hives an acre.

Average wildlife abundance across studied UK species has declined by 19% since 1970.

<50%

of wildlife habitats are in good or improving condition, with particular lows in woodlands (7%), peatlands (25%) and seafloors (0%).

Data from State of Nature 2023 report, updated 2025 and 2026.

All this movement from place to place puts the colonies under stress, there's nothing outside the almonds for the bees to forage on, and they are increasingly suffering from colony collapse disorder and the hives get drastically depleted. The process has been described as "sending the bees to war". It's not clear how long this system will be sustainable. Monocultures are not resilient: resilience lies in diversity.

Victory, 2016 (left) and, right, Barn Owl, 2019. The images on these pages and on this week's cover are from photographer Lara Porzak's stunning new book, The Chemistry of Memory, published by Damiani Books.

There have been six major extinction events in the history of life on this planet. The fifth was the K-Pg extinction that did for the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The sixth is happening right now. Extinction is taking place at a rate 1,000 times that of the “background rate”, the rate species would go extinct under normal circumstances.

Abnormal circumstances include the expansion of the human population, economic growth, overconsumption of Earth's resources and the alteration in climate. In one reckoning, there are more than eight million species of animals and plants: of which a million are under threat of extinction.

The US scientist Edward O Wilson, author of The Diversity of Life, coined the word biophilia: the human need for non-human life – not just for nutrition, but also for love, meaning and sanity. If you've ever smelled a rose or patted a dog, you get the point.

The human species is not an island; it reaches out to other species. Whenever we can we seek relief by taking a walk in the park, sitting in the pub garden or spending a weekend in the country. We belong to one of the world's most nature-deprived nations, with a consequent effect on our happiness and sanity. At least some of this could be allayed with greater access to nature. People talk about "the natural world" and every time I hear the phrase I wince. The natural world? As opposed to what?

And where does this leave the poor naturalist? All those birders with their eyes to the skies, botanists staring down at the rich earth, entomologists looking somewhere in between, trying to identify a speeding flash of colour as it jinks and dodges away... well, surely it was a late clouded yellow.

Today if you enrich your life by looking for nature, you will find loss. You seek joy; you can't avoid sadness. But you look anyway, because what's left is still the greatest thing we have on our planet. I'm writing these words after an early morning paddle in my canoe: a kingfisher crossed my bows, a marsh harrier rose from the bank alongside me, a heron nearly took my head off with a low flight downriver.

Nature is as sad as it is glorious. A bit like Hamlet: “The beauty of the world / The paragon of animals”. “In form and moving how express and admirable / In action how like an Angel.” And I’m not talking about humanity.

‘One thing that I’ve really tried to practise

Introducing eight new poems on birds and beasts, the poet laureate Simon Armitage tells Tom Gatti about writing in an age of climate collapse, discovering

is generating wonder'

nature with his late father, and his new translation the epic poem Gilgamesh

hen Simon Armitage was a boy, the natural world was often experienced with – or rather, through – his father. A bird enthusiast who was rarely without his pair of wartime binoculars, Peter Armitage is there in the first animal poem Armitage wrote, Heron, the second part of Two at the End of Winter, published in his debut pamphlet, Human Geography, when he was 23 years old in 1986. Peering “Through the action of the wipers,” Peter describes to his son how the bird: “Hangs in the shallows, shaking the rain / From its featherings.”

Armitage's dad returns 40 years later in a new poem published overleaf. Lapwings, Peewits records a memory of Armitage, aged seven or eight, sitting in the passenger seat of his father's van, watching “dozens of birds exploding skywards / out of a puddled building site, / a sudden kerfuffle of air” and asking their name – a scene that would be replayed later in life, with time reversing the roles.

It's one of several “birds and beasts” poems written by Armitage, 63, in a creative sprint over the past few months and printed here for the first time. Illustrated for us by The Observer's Chris Riddell, they will go into a book next year with images by the printmaker and artist Angela Harding; and then, perhaps, into a planned edition of Armitage's collected animal poems: he has 170 already – “It's like Noah's Ark.” Oh, and he also happens to have just published a new verse translation of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest surviving epic poem. Armitage's 10-year term as poet laureate ends in 2029 and he has never been so prolific. “I sometimes feel as if I've just started,” he says.

We are sitting drinking tea in egg-shaped garden chairs in “Shed No 2” at the back of Armitage’s house in the Holme Valley, West Yorkshire, October sunshine streaming in. Bright and uncluttered, it is usually reserved for writing and not to be confused with “Shed No 1”, where he hosted guests for his former podcast The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed.

Armitage himself was first interviewed by Fleet Street veteran Maureen Cleave: “You’re new to this,” she told him at the end. “A word of advice: never invite a journalist to your house. They’ll look in your bathroom cabinet.” It’s a rule he has maintained ever since, so I’m privileged it has been temporarily relaxed today (though when I visit the loo, he does warn me: “The cabinet’s got an alarm on it”). Built on the imprint of a dairy, the house – which he shares with his wife, Sue, a radio producer – has a well-kept garden, dotted with geometric metal sculptures: “They’re just... bits and pieces from sales at garden centres,” he says with a smile, but the poet – a trustee of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park – is fooling nobody.

Armitage's father died in 2021, but keeps pitching up in our conversation, just as he does in his son's poems. He was, Armitage says, a keen gardener and a "knackler" – a person "who made things from bits and pieces". "There was just this general idea that the men would be out of the house as much as possible... you weren't a country gent, but you were a bit closer to the land than a lot of people are now." His father worked as a plumber, a fireman and later a probation officer, but the lapwing memory comes from a "pretty lean time" when he was buying and selling used tyres. "It was an incredibly entrepreneurial, rag-and-bone [period]... I loved driving around with him."

For Armitage's dad, holidays meant walks. In Kielder Forest in Northumberland, when they weren't being eaten alive by midges while setting up camp, they would explore. "I remember, many a time, walking through those forest landscapes, where they cut the fire breaks into the trees, seeing a deer just cross, come out into the open for a moment, really conspicuous, and then sort of melt away." On the East Yorkshire coast at Bempton, Armitage would get "down on my hands and knees with my dad, crawling towards the cliff edge, so we

could peer over. It was really windy; there'd be puffins, guillemots, razorbills, and gannets in the water... a spectacular cacophony." He drew on this memory for his puffin poem but decided it needed a comic touch: hence the Dad's Army "Captain Mainwaring figure, waddling along".

The pun that opens the poem Weasel or Stoat? – “Weasels are weasily recognised but stoats are stoatally different” – was turned by his father into “a kind of oral meme”, handed down: “It’s become my line now, and every time I say it, everybody rolls their eyes.” Armitage sees the creatures “quite often, momentarily, little flashes as they run across the road” and can tell them apart by the tip of the tail. “But they’re really wick” – fast – “as they say around here.”

Peter, an outsize personality who was heavily involved in amateur dramatics, was “a bit of a birdwatcher and a Shakespeare lover” – hence his admiration for James Edmund Harting’s encyclopedic 1871 work The Ornithology of Shakespeare. Having inherited his father’s edition, Armitage has given himself a long-term project: to write a poem for each of the birds – “I think there are 80-odd” – featured. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he deadpans. “Robert Macfarlane will probably do it first.”

It is, perhaps, another way of talking to his dad. It's also a way of recording what we're losing. From Armitage's shed, perched above a richly wooded valley, we look out over the hedgerows at the South Pennines and towards Saddleworth Moor. One valley across is his home village of Marsden. He's lived in this area his whole life – and he has catalogued the changes. "Birdlife has capitulated. I used to see tree creepers, running up and down the bark of a sycamore; I haven't seen them for three or four years. I can't remember the last time I saw a greenfinch in the garden. I haven't heard a cuckoo for four years now, and that's the emblem bird of the village where I grew up."

Then there are the wildfires. “We had them when I was a kid, at the end of the summer, but now, three or four times a year, the moor is on fire. It’s spectacular, these huge curtains of smoke up into the sky, and at night, necklaces of fire coming down the hills towards the reservoirs. But it’s absolutely devastating for the bird and insect life.”

On being made poet laureate in 2019, Armitage launched something of a manifesto for poetry in the age of climate collapse. He established the Laurel prize for environmental poetry, donating £5,000 of his £7,000 annual

laureate stipend to the award (“I squander the rest, as George Best said”). It cannot hurt that his patron is on-message. In 2021, Armitage visited the then Prince Charles in the barn of his Welsh home, Llwynywermod, near Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, for his podcast (he is, incidentally, “still trying to get to the bottom” of why the BBC dropped the show after three series).

“It was a good coming together of common interests, and afterwards we had a wander around in a meadow... He’s an incredibly knowledgeable environmentalist, and has been talking quite openly about these issues for a long time.” (He now sees King Charles at both “formal and informal” occasions; they seem to get on well.)

Armitage had a further “awakening” when he visited the Arctic in 2023 and saw the effects of the climate crisis up close. “Even going back 5,000 years,” he says, “the poets of Gilgamesh knew that nature was something that we had to live hand in hand with, and Wordsworth and the Romantics recognised that we could do damage to it – but I don’t think they had any notion that we could completely annihilate it.”

Gilgamesh is an epic poem, probably based on a real Sumerian king, that would have existed as oral stories and songs before the first written texts appeared in about 2000BC in southern Babylonia – what is now Iraq. In the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu – two godlike bros from the Mesopotamia manosphere – set out to slay Humbaba, guardian of the cedar forest. They succeed but Enkidu

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Continued from page 11

dies, and Gilgamesh, racked by mourning and roaming the wilderness in a lion's pelt, comes to comprehend his own mortality and, as a result, to seek eternal life.

Assembled from approximately 70 fragments of cuneiform tablet, with no definitive start or end and many missing passages along the way, the text is a fiendish jigsaw puzzle for translators. Armitage, commissioned by his US publisher, Norton, on the strength of his highly readable versions of the Odyssey and the middle English poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, spent seven years on Gilgamesh. What did he feel it said to us in the 21st century?

“Well, at the heart of the poem is a tyrant who is cruel and arrogant,” Armitage says, with a raised eyebrow. “There’s quite a few of them around now...” His clear, propulsive translation brings out the strange and deeply subversive quality of the narrative, which “bigs Gilgamesh up” at the beginning – literally so, in a section that measures his huge body parts in cubits (an ancient unit of length based on the distance from elbow to fingertip) – only to “dismantle him section by section”.

It's also “an adventure poem”, and “would make an amazing video game”, Armitage says, though he confesses that he has never played one. He has, however, watched The Odyssey and found it “frustrating” in its lack of interest in nuance or language (and resembling, in its Calypso scenes, “a holiday advert for the Bahamas”). “Having said that,” he quickly adds, “if Christopher Nolan is interested in the next big epic...”

In its apocalyptic account of the great flood, Gilgamesh is source material for the Bible and “one of the great flashback scenes of literature”. But the poem’s most disturbing passage, I found, is the heroes’ slaughter of Humbaba and the mindless devastation of the great cedar forest with its rich commonwealth of birds, insects and monkeys. Committed purely in pursuit of glory, this violation of the natural world marks the beginning of the end for Enkidu and Gilgamesh.

"My friend," Enkidu boasts, "we have toppled a towering cedar / whose crown reached into the very heavens" – and it's hard at this point not to think of the modern vandals who felled the Sycamore Gap tree three years ago. Armitage wrote a poem at the time, addressed to the culprits who scale "the tumbledown wall" and plant the "fuck-them-all flag". "People have asked me, am I going to write a poem about what's happening in Gaza, in Palestine, in Israel?" he says. "That poem is called The Holy Land and, ostensibly, it's about the sycamore, but my feeling is, it's a poem about forgiveness and doesn't come with that title for no reason."

Gilgamesh deals with “the unfathomable question of what it is to be alive – and what it is to be dead – that we’re no nearer answering than we were 5,000 years ago”. Armitage’s father died while he was working on the translation. “He was something of a Gilgamesh figure,” he says, “a huge extrovert.” As the poet himself gets “nearer the cliff edge”, he finds himself reaching for a “language that is slightly ritualised, close to prayer”. “I’ve noticed how often I’ve written about people who have died and come back, about Lazarus, about Odysseus, who’s been to the underworld, about Orpheus and, in Pearl, the man seeing his [dead] daughter again on the other side of the river. I think it takes me back to that idea that all poetry is an attempt at conversation with people who are no longer here.”

His animal poems are sometimes that: elegies for what we are losing. But, more than anything, Armitage wants them to capture the extraordinary quality of life on Earth. “One thing that I’ve really tried to practise is generating wonder. That’s what I took from Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. They were great advocates for the natural world, but they weren’t necessarily campaigners and crusaders. They generated wonder in animals, in trees, flowers, insects, landscape.”

It's there in the woodcock's camouflage, the puffin's underwater grace, the myths we've created to explain the miracle that is a hare or golden plover. "In some of these poems, I'm trying to say: 'Look at this incredible living thing. You'd have struggled to invent that, but it exists.'"

Gilgamesh: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage is published by Faber (£14.99). Subscribers receive a 20% discount off RRP when ordering from observershop.co.uk

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NEW POEMS BY SIMON ARMITAGE

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Lapwings, Peewits

I'm driving, you're lost in sleep. You've tipped the passenger seat to a deckchair angle, the seat belt a sling or harness across your chest.

Then half awake you squint through the nearside window and see the birds, lifting from ground water pooled in a ploughed field,

notice the strobing paddles of wings, black and white, black and white, and the mid-air cartwheels and panicky loops of flight.

“Tell me the name,” you say, the way I asked you to tell me, a kid of seven or eight in the front seat of the transit van

where I wasn't allowed,

dozens of birds exploding skywards

out of a puddled building site,

a sudden kerfuffle of air, one flapping

alongside, so close I could see the glossy green of its tunic and pharaoh's crest. "Lapwings," you said. Then half a century flickered past.

I'm driving, you're half awake. "Lapwings," I say, and you nod, taking its nickname, "Peewits, son, peewits," back down into the dream.

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Weasel or Stoat?

"Weasels are weasily recognised but stoats are stoatally different."

Was it my dad who said

if you catch a weasel asleep, piss

in its ear,

or was it Shakespeare? The point is this: blink and they're gone.

Just seeing a weasel awake is a rare event, so don't suppose

you'll stumble on one with its eyes closed, taking an afternoon nap, because

if they do nod off it's never for more than a split second.

It's also reckoned the first weasel on earth was a jilted bride;

during shower parties

and hen nights

they creep on pink tiptoes

into closets and wardrobes to gorge on wedding dresses and wedding veils,

which explains why some weasels lose their cream vests and chestnut topcoats

and turn virgin white once in a while. Or is that the stoat

I'm thinking about, a creature so wiry and pliant it can corkscrew or summersault

inside its own pelt.

The first stoat in the world

swallowed a lightning bolt;

now they carry a charge

of thousands of volts, as some folk

have found out

by getting too close to a stoat's mouth. Its tail has a bushy black tip,

which the weasel borrowed to wipe its arse while the stoat slept.

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Hare

A thin line of cloud passes over the moon and a hare blinks. If a hare darts between two lovers it's love for life.

Leverets feed on the moon's milk. When humans walk on the moon every hare on earth stands up on its hind legs.

Hares get drunk and dance in the sun's blind spot.

Only a crooked sixpence or silver button can tempt a hare through the garden gate.

In winter the mountain hare becomes snow.

The length of a hare's leap is not distance but time – the world's heart misses a beat.

The moon warns the hare by striking sparks on the wolf's tooth.

Even asleep a hare hears moonlight moving through meadow grass. When a hare bolts it leaves its shape behind for the moonstruck artist to draw. The moonstruck poet hopes to write what the hare keeps under its tongue.

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The Lark Descending

I was out and about,

watching skylarks skylarking,

doing their thing,

noticing skylarks pinned to the sky like daylight stars,

others being yanked upwards

yo-yo style

then sinking earthwards.

Some poets have said they escort souls to heaven's gate,

or muscle and fight

to the edge of space

to puncture the planet's roof

and bring word

from the mouths of angels,

or feed on crumbs

from God's table.

But if skylarks reach

those wild heights, and look back

at this planet,

where the air burns

and rivers drown,

why would they come down?

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Vanishing Act

"Hands up if you've seen a woodcock?" Of course nobody had, and one man smirked because woodcock is a funny word, right? I opened an old tobacco tin and tipped out a few pin-feathers, like tiny spears, and told the crowd those feathers are so fine they're sometimes used as brushes and nibs for the most detailed and delicate work: decorating toy soldiers with fancy medals, applying expensive gold paint to the bodies of luxury cars, removing specks of dust from precision instruments and human eyes, scripting in best miniature copperplate. In the bed chambers of Eastern sensualists, when stroked and teased against...let's say... highly sensitive skin, the tender tips make the whole body quiver and sing. Everyone was certainly listening now. But the bird's real party piece, I said, is camouflage and disguise. To prove it I took off my hat, which wasn't a hat after all but an actual woodcock, alive and alert; people were wowed by its cute pot belly, its lofty forehead and puffed breast, its bill – an ancient wooden needle, its eyes – two bubbles of black ink, and the cryptic plumage – tan, grey, buff, black, ochre and white, unreadable, blurred. I moved it just a smidge to one side, set it against the world we live in and the way we live now, and it disappeared.

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Puffin

He's a stocky, upright, uptight chap who leans forward a little, self-appointed warden and squire of a coastal town

in his tailored coat,

hands clasped behind his back

strutting about, tut-tutting

at dropped litter and vulgar graffiti,

making his daily visits,

wouldn't say no to another sherry,

yes please to a biscuit.

Are you putting the kettle on?

A born busybody, from his lookout post above the shoreline

he takes the names of bad gulls and shakes his head, makes a note

of passing vessels in his pocketbook then stomps about some more, on neighbourhood watch in hi-viz waterproof over-trousers

and matching boots. And that stripy beak: he says it's a row of medals but he stuck his nose in somebody's trifle.

Then later on, after forty winks and a custard tart he waddles along to the cliffs and belly flops into the waves below,

AND SUDDENLY HE'S AN ACTION HERO,

a fizz of bubbles and muscle,

a blur of tumbles, zigzags

and pirouettes, treasure-hunting

for sprats and sand eels

through seaweed, rip tide and heavy current.

Is it a bird, is it a fish?

No, it's Superpuffin or Puffinman,

with feet for rudders and wings for propellers, torpedoing into the depths then bursting the surface loaded with silver.

Where sunlight hits spindrift his beak becomes rainbow.

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The Golden Plover

One question writers get asked all the time: which book do you keep at the side of the bed, on the bedside table, next to the bedside lamp? I say Plato's Republic or Finnegans Wake but really it's The Observer's Book of Birds, a second-hand copy, my fourth or fifth after others fell from rucksack pockets or slipped down the back of bookshelves or stayed behind every time I switched lives. It's pocket sized; each bird has a page to itself and its own illustration, mostly black and white but some in muted tones of blue, green, brown – folk-tale woods behind shadowy reeds – as if the birds only lived in the soft light of the past. And a page is usually all it takes for sleep to walk me onto a moor or shore where a golden plover in its “spotted hood and cloak of black and gold” pours out its “liquid notes.” Then in the dream the bird performs its otherness: outruns the buckshot from a blunderbuss, turns rain into glitter, tells the future, feeds flecks of sunlight to its young. They say when Jesus was a boy he made the bird from broken toys or fragments of clay, waved his magic hand over the shattered parts and conjured flight from lifeless molecules. Therefore the golden plover is a miracle.

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The Contact

A deer comes to mind, steps into the firebreak between dark green firs, tiptoes forward then stops. I'm fifty yards and twenty years

downwind, taking a hit from a hip flask, licking the tip of a pencil. Framed in the narrow shaft of the view it stands there unfazed,

caught in crosshairs

of every thought

in my head. It stares

straight through me then turns and stalks

out of that long clear unplanted lane and becomes trees again.

Illustrations by Chris Riddell

'Napoleon's

orangutan

had beautiful

manners, but

she was not made

for Paris...

In her new collection, Katherine Rundell celebrates the secret lives and super powers of animals, from the French emperor's pet primate to the snake that weighs two Mike Tysons

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Orangutan

Rose was an unusual member of the emperor Napoleon's household; she wore a short frock coat, and would sit with the empress Josephine at dinner, using her knife and fork to eat her favourite food: turnips. But at just 10 months old, she was much younger than the politicians at the table, and, also, she was an orangutan.

Rose was said to sleep, sometimes, in Josephine and Napoleon's bed. She was named for Josephine, who had been christened Marie Joséphe Rose, and she had beautiful manners: she would rise to greet people when they came into a room; she was polite to the cat. But for all her loveliness, she was not made for Paris. She was desperate to suckle, both for sustenance and for affection: she was offered first a human wet nurse and then a goat, but neither was what she needed. Rose survived only five months, before she died in 1808 in Josephine's captivity.

Three decades later, in the spring of 1836, Paris received a new orangutan. This one was called Jack, and he arrived in elegance, riding in a coach from Nantes to be deposited in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. A newspaper reported: "We saw him at the window of his lodging, holding with his hind hand (for monkeys have hands instead of feet) a glass of sugar-water, and with one of his upper hands a biscuit, which he dipped into the liquid each time he wanted a bite." Within days, Jack was a Parisian celebrity. Jostling crowds flocked to see him in such numbers that hundreds were turned away. The celebrated sculptor Jean-Pierre Dantan fashioned his bust, catching his sad beauty and shaping

Capable of weeding paths, washing clothes and stealing canoes... a smiling orangutan.

Ralph Lear/Alamy

the hair around his head to resemble a crown; painters came to set his face on canvas. It was thought that perhaps Jack could resolve what the museum's superintendent of the menagerie called "one of the most debated questions in natural history and philosophy", the question of how far man and ape differed: was it a difference in absolute or only in degree? Would Jack, living with the monkey-keeper's family and eating at the table with his children, develop human understanding? A scholar offered to teach him sign language; a young, pre-fame Franz Liszt offered to perform a concert for him on the piano.

But Jack, like Rose, could not flourish in captivity. The writer George Sand went to see him that winter and reported: "The orangutan is very ill. He looked at me with a dying expression, and when I tried to help him wrap himself in his blankets, he gave me a hard slap on the hand." The orangutan died at the turn of the year, and no concert was ever played for him.

Orangutans, of which there are three species, are extraordinarily intelligent. For years, we thought they were outranked by chimpanzees, until late in the 20th century it became clear that the tasks they were being set were too easy; they had no interest in stacking boxes to retrieve a banana. Once they were given more challenging tests, they soared ahead of chimps in many areas. In the 1970s, a camp was set up by the primatologist Biruté Galdikas in Borneo, known as Camp Leakey. There the orangutans, simply by watching the humans who lived alongside them, learned to weed paths, wash clothes and how to steal the canoes tied up on the riverbank and sail them downstream.

Orangutans use large leaves as umbrellas to keep themselves and their babies dry in torrential downpours. They build nests in trees, with verdant pillows and blankets and canopies; it takes the young orangutan seven years to learn how to fold foliage into a perfect shelter. They have the longest childhood of any non-human animal, weaning between the ages of six and nine, and even after the juveniles have learned how to build their own nests, they will often begin the night in their own beds but come clambering into their mothers' in the dark of the night. If the adults need to ford a river too deep to swim, they bend branches into bridges. Recently, a male Sumatran orangutan in the wild was observed with a vicious open facial

wound. He chewed on the leaves of a liana called Fibraurea tinctoria, then rubbed the juice of the plant on to the wound, covering the entire surface with masticated leaves. Within five days the wound, which could have killed him, had closed.

And they have those intelligences that we don't have a name for: knowledges that we do not yet know enough to know we lack. Their survival, though, is in our hands. They are critically endangered – we have poached them, slaughtered them, and now we are illegally destroying their forests in our quest for palm oil. There are only 800 individuals of the Tapanuli orangutan left on the planet.

Charles Darwin went to visit an orangutan called Jenny in London Zoo in 1838. He wrote: “Let man visit Ouranoutang in domestication... see its intelligence when spoken [to]; as if it understands every word said – see its affection to those it knew – see its passion & rage, sulkiness, & very actions of despair;... and then let him boast of his proud pre-eminence.”

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Snake

As if the world were not hard enough, sometimes it rains snakes. At least, so it was claimed. It was reported after a tornado in Memphis in 1877, and in South Dakota in 1890, and in Columbus in 1907. The Memphis snakes were almost certainly worms – but in 1909 the Evening Star insisted that “thousands of tiny snakes poured from the clouds into Golden Gate Park during the storm of Monday... the walks of the big pleasure grounds were covered with a wriggling mass of snakes... Secretary Healy said: ‘We thought at first that they were worms or fish, but on inspection saw that they were really snakes.’”

We do not tend to love snakes, even those that pose no threat to us – perhaps because of Adam and Eve, or perhaps because they have no eyelids and it is hard to truly admire a creature that watches us so unblinkingly. And while the number of snakes deadly to us is relatively low – 250 from around 4,000 species – they kill more than 100,000 humans per year, almost all in areas with poor access to healthcare. But they are miracles of ingenuity. They are fast: the death adder can strike, inject its venom and return to its starting position in 0.15 seconds. The so-called flying snake can propel itself from tree to tree, flaring out its ribs to make a temporary wing. And they are dazzlingly various; they range in size from the heaviest, the green anaconda, which weighs up to 220kg – that is more than two Mike Tysons' worth of snake – to the Barbados threadsnake, as thin as a shoelace.

If there were a medal for flashes of evolutionary brilliance, it would go to snakeskin. It needs to be both rough enough to create friction on smooth surfaces and smooth enough to move over seemingly impossible terrain; to climb up trees and mountainsides and sprint over sand without legs. Of course,

when the skin becomes too worn and battered, they simply shed it, rubbing their faces against a rough surface to loosen the skin. They exit head first, the skin peeling off inside out; the same movement as peeling off a pair of stockings, though both more elegant and more grotesque. And snakes have hair: microscopic microfibrils along the base of the body, which allow them to move sideways and backwards. Some, to move faster, secrete an oil from the nasal passages, which they rub over their scales: essentially, the most valuable iteration of snot.

Snake numbers are falling fast across the world due to habitat loss, roads and climatic shifts. The Round Island burrowing boa is already extinct, and the ornate ground snake – non-venomous, yellow-spotted, harmless to us – numbers fewer than 20. Many years ago, walking alone in rural Zimbabwe, I met a deadly green mamba. It reared up like a periscope out of the grass, when I was almost upon it – a bracingly enduring way to be reminded to make noise when walking through long grass. I was, yes, terrified of dying, but it was also radiant green and entirely alien, and I would put its price beyond emeralds.

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Chicken

How do we define the geological epoch of the Anthropocene? The term describes the period in which humans have become a force of planetary change, and there are many possible markers for its beginning: the Industrial Revolution, the hydrogen bomb tests, the surge in postwar use of fossil fuel power plants; or, perhaps, the broiler chicken.

When you and I are dug up again, what will remain of us are landfill sites of technofossils, plastics, concrete – and, scattered across the world, chicken bones: a record of the 60bn chickens consumed annually. There are, right now, around 30bn chickens on the Earth – 10 times more than any other bird. We began domesticating chickens 8,000 years ago, but it's only since the Second World War that our chicken consumption has

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Chickens are intelligent – to use bird-brained as an insult is gross libel

exploded. We started to treat them as a daily rather than weekly or monthly food. Bred to reach five times the weight of their ancestors and to eat without cessation, broiler chicken bones have a metabolic signature that marks them out from their ancestors and a distinct bone chemistry that is a result of the total homogeneity of their diet. They are a different animal.

For a while, we believed that they could tell the future. In ancient Rome, military action required the approval of the gods: augurs and priests would study the birds for omens, watching the patterns of their flight to read the gods' intentions. At sea, though, birds couldn't be relied upon to materialise, so ships sailed with cargos of sacred chickens to consult. The chickens would be given grain: if they ate it, it would be taken that the omen was a good one; if they did not, it was the gods' rejection of the plan of action. In 249BCE in the First Punic War, the Roman consul Publius Claudius Pulcher consulted the sacred chickens before launching his naval attack. The chickens refused to eat the grain, whereupon Pulcher said: "If they will not eat, let them drink," and hurled them overboard and attacked anyway. The battle was a disaster, losing 93 ships. The consul was hauled home and fined for not listening to the birds. He never held another command, rendering the score in man versus chicken nil-nil (though with the moral high ground to the chicken).

Yet if they are not, in fact, psychic, still they are spectacular birds. They exist in more than 500 breeds; from the silkies, which are the ones that look like ambulant dandelion puffs, to Polish chickens, which are the ones that look like rich widows. And they are intelligent – to use bird-brained as an insult is gross libel. Chickens have been trained to win consecutive games of noughts and crosses; they can lift latches, memorise numbers and recognise a hundred human faces. Presented with a half-completed triangle, chicks can deduce what the full shape should look like with all its parts in place. And they seem to have communication skills equal to those of some primates. They strategise: a rooster, for instance, on seeing an aerial predator will let out a warning call if he knows a female is nearby, but if a male rival is around, he'll keep smugly silent. A female will sound the alarm for her chicks, but not necessarily for her sisters. If a cold wind ruffles her young, she reacts as if in physical pain herself. These are the creatures we keep in sheds of 50,000 birds together. To know that they understand enough to speak to and deceive and protect one another might make us pause and look again; and again; and again.

A radicals' guide to The Wind in the Willows

The estate that inspired Toad Hall is to be handed over to the community, challenging centuries of aristocratic ownership and offering an alternative vision for England's future, argues Nick Hayes

The Wind in the Willows is being rewritten. There have been various reimaginings over the years, but this is like no other;

it comes not from an author, or from stage or film. Instead, it comes from the land it was set in, an old aristocratic estate on the banks of the Thames, whose Victorian lord and Tudor manor house are widely understood to have been Kenneth Grahame's inspiration for Toad and Toad Hall.

For more than 100 years, The Wind in the Willows has encapsulated a peculiarly Edwardian vision of the English countryside. It is a paean to the mythical golden age of England, the romance of what Toad calls “the open road... the heath, the common, the hedgerows”, and its vision of harmonious, quiet order has become integral to the national story of ourselves. But beneath its surface lurks a much darker, paranoid political analogy; one that says a lot about the pastoral dream of Olde England and our modern state: it is a book about class.

Consider its characters. Mole is Grahame, stumbling out of his busy, fussy middle-class world into the dream state of the Thames. Rat, however, who seems to be permanently on holiday, represents the author's dream of what he'd rather be doing than slogging it out in his day job at the Bank of England. Badger is more like the squirarchy, a small landowner, a recognised authority in this river valley. He has a vested interest in the overarching system: a friend of Toad's father, he is sage, serious, and carries a whiff of noblesse oblige, the heavy responsibility of managing not just the land, but the social order of the animals under his domain.

Badger, Toad, Mole and Rat armed to retake Toad Hall in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, illustrated by Peter Barrett.

Peter Barrett/Bridgeman Images

Toad is the brash, feckless heir to the old landed estate, forever hurtling through the countryside in his new motor cars, upturning applecarts and crashing through the invisible lines of Edwardian etiquette. Beneath it all lurk the Wild Wood weasels, the shadowy political dissidents, forever looking for a chance to turn this precious world upside down.

When the law catches up with Toad, and he ends up behind bars for a car accident, the weasels take advantage of now empty Toad Hall; they invade, and squat it until they are eventually removed by Badger-as-bailiff, sword in hand, evicting the dissidents from England's ancient system of power. The book is an allegorical alarm call, alerting its readers to what may happen to England if its established, hereditary hierarchy is one day overturned and the country is owned and run, once again, by its communities.

On publication in 1908, this warning about the creeping rot of socialism would have been much clearer to its contemporary readership than today. England's aristocratic architecture was beginning to crumble. After a debilitating agricultural depression in the 1870s, country estates were unable to support the labourers and staff needed to sustain those enormous machines of private wealth generation. These estates were either left to decay, or more often, sold to a new tier of self-made industrialists, the nouveau riche, who, without their lineage of historical power, displayed a distinct lack of noblesse oblige, and, like Toad behind the wheel, a reckless inability to manage the new power in their hands.

The Wind in the Willows came out three years after the first Russian Revolution, at a time when European powers were becoming increasingly worried about similar attacks on hereditary power on their own continent. Across Europe, throughout the 19th century, newspapers had made much of attempted assassinations of monarchs, heads of state and industrialists, assailed by daggers, pistols and Orsini bombs. But at the turn of the 20th century, individual anarchist attacks had fizzled under a more systemic organising of mass, international labour movements.

In England, the Labour party was founded in 1900, and by the time Grahame's book was published, the Liberal party was preparing its infamous “people’s budget” of 1909. The Welsh chancellor, David Lloyd George, who was openly critical of the monarchy, was designing a tax system to pay for a new proto-welfare state, proposing an increase in death duties and a “supertax” on income over a threshold of £3,000 (about half a million quid in today’s money). Most devastatingly of all for the inherited powerbase of England, the Liberals proposed a 20% tax on the unearned increase in the value of land.

The Wind in the Willows was its author's daydream that none of this was happening. It is the ultimate conservative text, the glorification of a story of England whose order is maintained only by consistently ignoring the voices it oppresses. It is the extension of Edmund Burke's picturesque vision of England from the 1790s, where he described the English constitution as an oak grown from the ground, a natural law of hereditary monarchy, with its population of docile, compliant cows chewing cud in its protective shade.

Pan out from Burke's oak, and you can spy Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger picnicking by the river. The book ends with the heroic eviction of the weasels, a banquet for the victors, and the four animals continue to lead their lives “...in great joy and contentment, undisturbed by further risings or invasions”. The dystopian nightmare of socialism, a country run for and by the people, has narrowly been avoided and the landed hierarchy are back where they belong, in Toad Hall.

But then, more than a century later, comes a new plot twist; the story is not over. Because the estate that this book was

based on, the Hardwick estate in South Oxfordshire, is about to do the very thing Grahame feared the most: upend England's feudal hierarchy and hand the governance of the land over to the community. In an unprecedented move, the aristocratic owners are about to disinherit themselves of the estate, and transfer its management to the community – various small-scale farmers and landworkers – that lives there. The weasels will no longer be squatting Toad Hall: they will run the place.

For the past five years or so, the Hardwick estate has engaged lawyers to explore a question that has rarely been asked in England: what happens to property if it is handed away? The ownership of land has always been a story projected on to the landscape, what lawyers refer to as a “legal fiction”. But by opening the Pandora’s box of archaic English property law, by removing its one core focus (the big man at the top), myriad questions come flooding out. Such questions range from pragmatic concerns right through to abstract, even philosophical or spiritual questions: can land ever be “un-owned”?

In English law, the answer is clear: nope. So, having studied other community ownership models across the more visionary landscape of Scotland, the estate and its lawyers decided to transition the ownership of the land to a charity run by a board of trustees, who represent the community. Scotland already has more than 850 community-owned assets, which cover more than 200,000 hectares (about half a million acres) of land. Estates such as Eigg or Knoydart all, at some point in

Continued on page 18

Continued from page 16

the past 30 years, raised the money, bought out their absentee owners and brought the management of the land back into local hands.

Studies have shown how community ownership has revitalised local communities, kickstarted new rural economies, and with job prospects no longer confined to cities and towns, lured children to return home and raise youngsters of their own. While the Hardwick estate has a lot to learn from communities such as the Isle of Eigg, the transformation in South Oxfordshire is even more radical: the estate is not being sold, but given away.

The Hardwick estate is uniquely placed to become a beacon for a forward-thinking, radical future. The surrounding area of South Oxfordshire is a microcosm of England's ballooning property market and poisoned, industrialised landscape. But this 365-hectare estate is an island of life in a dead sea. Hardwick has been organic for 50 years and has become a refuge for diverse wildlife, with rare orchids, butterflies, glowworms, goshawks, red kites and a nightingale that sings by the river; its rare chalk grassland valleys billow with butterflies as you walk through them.

The Hardwick estate in South Oxfordshire, whose manor house is said to have been Kenneth Grahame's (below) inspiration for Toad Hall. Alamy; Bridgeman/ Getty Images

longside its thriving ecology, Hardwick is also home to a vibrant community of rural workers, who are working

parcels of its land. The Hempen Organic co-operative grows the banned ancient plant of England, hemp and sells its magical formula, CBD (cannabidiol); Tolhurst Organic is a famous success story of organic agriculture, whose founder, Iain Tolhurst, received an MBE in 2023, essentially for services to the soil. Working alongside the vegan market gardeners is a beef farmer, who uses his pasture-fed Hereford sucklers to manage some of England's rarest floodplain meadows. There is a coppicer, a forester, various weavers, a shepherdess and natural dyer, and a stalker, who culls the deer and supplies the estate with venison.

Though the residents are by no means ideologically uniform, they are united by one focus, which seems to undercut many of the partisan fence lines so entrenched in England today: the health of the land. In recent years, the Knepp estate in Sussex has become the famous touchstone for the practice of rewilding, creating a utopia for flora and fauna, but by devolving the power from the single decision-maker at the top, by sharing the wealth of the land and its profits, the Hardwick estate is going much further than Knepp: it is rewilding the system of property in England – it is “re-commoning” the land.

The enclosure of the commons, which accelerated between the 17th and 19th centuries, is at the heart of many of England's modern

The enclosure of the commons is at the heart

But during the 200 years of parliamentary-backed enclosure, the land the commoners relied upon was fenced off, privatised, and their rights of subsistence were criminalised by the state. While some villages were entirely obliterated, their residents evicted en masse (in parallel with the clearances in Scotland), every community across England suffered when they lost their

of many of England's modern crises

crises, from its fragmented societies to its battered ecologies. It is a wound in the country's psyche, an injustice to its people, that is rarely acknowledged on the political landscape, or taught in schools. For centuries, maybe millennia, autonomous local communities across England managed areas of land in a sustainable, resilient manner, tending resources that they used for subsistence; these areas became known as the commons. Each commons was regulated according to its local available resources, and the customs, traditions and lore of use rights and responsibilities that grew from them were as diverse as the ecologies they fostered.

common land. According to one contemporary chronicler, the removal of common rights from villagers was like knocking the keystone from the arch, so that the whole framework of rural culture came crashing down. No longer able to subsist autonomously, rural workers were drained from the countryside to work factory jobs in cities and towns, and local communities disintegrated.

But there was also a deeper, more abstract consequence that we have grown accustomed to today: the almost absolute obliteration of England's land culture. The plant lore, traditional farming and craft techniques, the festivities, the dance, song, and story – every act and practice that wove us deeper into our local landscape, that formed the fabric of our belonging to place – was lost. With its roots pulled from the soil, our land culture withered on the vine. England has

Lloyd George's People's Budget of 1909 sought to reclaim the wealth generated by land. Alamy

As a result, these days, neither Rat nor Mole, Badger nor even Toad would have the legal right to govern the health of the Thames; since 1989 and the privatisation of the water industry, that belongs to a revolving consortium of sovereign wealth funds from all over the world. But, in certain pockets of the kingdom, the Wild Wood weasels of England and Wales are already beginning to take ownership, if not of the land,

forgotten that this ancient lore of the commons, along with the land it governed, were as much a part of our heritage as any mansion or landscaped lawn that replaced them.

Today, with our connection to nature more or less limited to tourism or “recreation”, with our rural culture claimed – with no hint of irony – by the foxhunting lobby (which helped to destroy it), and with our mythopoetic relationship with the land long buried in its soil, we have forgotten that the crisis of England’s declining ecology is all of our responsibilities. The sovereignty of our land was taken from its people, and now belongs not just to its owners but also a raft of multinational corporations such as Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, the invisible giants that control the seed, fertiliser and pesticide markets, that monopolise the supply chains, fix the prices, and lobby government policy.

Where has this recent surge of communal nature guardianship come from? For the heiress of Hardwick – Miriam Rose, co-inheritor with her brother, Lawrence – the impulse for the transition of ownership came from reading a recent biography of her ancestor, called The Real Mr Toad. While his biographer presents Charles Rose as a pioneering Victorian man, a great industrialist, his great-great-granddaughter's reaction was one of horror.

And they, in turn, are controlled by even larger titans of finance, which tie our fields into a complicated matrix of global market forces, financial speculation and commodities trading. Hedge fund companies most of us have never heard of – AlphaSimplex Group, Systematica Investments, Lynx Asset Management – operate on multibillion-dollar revenues, and see the fields and farms of the world as part of a wider portfolio of investment.

of its myriad crises. Recently, 5,000 claimants across the catchment area of the rivers Lugg, Usk and Wye took Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Avara Foods Ltd and Freemans of Newent Ltd to court for allegedly being complicit in poisoning their waterways with chicken shit.

The case, which seeks both personal reparation and the improvement of water quality, leans on evidence collected not by the much-criticised Environment Agency, but by citizen science, scores of local people taking readings, monitoring, actively caring and advocating for the watercourses they love. The deprivatisation of water companies was a recent campaign pledge – and even more recent U-turn – by our prime minister. But Andy Burnham should take note: the campaigns to protect our rivers, like the rivers themselves, have a momentum of their own; they can only be dammed for so long.

The coherent next step will be public or community ownership, not just of our waterways, but of the land around them. With its revolutionary land tax, Lloyd George's people's budget sought to reclaim the wealth generated by land, but this would have redressed only half of the loss of the commons; the other half is just as urgent: the ability to make communal decisions about land.

GENIAL FOREIGNER: HOW THEY MUST WISH THAT M $^{2}$ LLOYD GEORGE HAD TAXED US INSTEAD OF THEM

Having spent most of her early adulthood campaigning against the extraction of global resources, specifically against the mining corporation Vedanta, she was shocked to discover her ancestor's role in exactly that business; he was a financier who raised money for railroads and mining ventures across the great plains of North America, and in India, Australia and South Africa.

The implications of colonial reparation – how to atone, and whom to atone to – are too complex and entangled for this article (which is why I wrote a book about it). But rather than making a one-off payment to one particular group, the Hardwick estate has made perhaps an even more radical move, to stop the process of harm right at its source: the exclusive dominion of property.

Like Hardwick, England itself is beginning to grapple with a deep, uncomfortable irony: that it has most to learn from the cultures it owes most to. Like water rising from an aquifer, Indigenous thought is again beginning to permeate English soil; work from Indigenous authors such as Tyson Yunkaporta and Robin Wall Kimmerer is introducing millennia-old thought systems back into English culture; social lores that promote resilience, sustainability and reverence of the natural world.

The work of such scholars is finding large audiences and inspiring new work from native English authors. The Right to Roam campaign's recent book, Wild Service, advocates for guardianship over nature, with or without ownership of it, and Robert Macfarlane's book Is a River Alive? considers animism in its most pragmatic form: whether a river should have legal rights of its own. His forthcoming Reith lectures will examine what he calls "the human superiority complex", pulling humanity from its pedestal of dominium, and asking for us to see ourselves existing within the web of life.

By listening to societies still connected to their pre-colonial cultures, England may just be beginning to remember an older relationship it once held with land: that, long before the dominion of ownership, communities practised a dynamic, integrated sense of belonging.

Globally, the debate about land reform has progressed much further than in England. The Land Back movement,

a loose affiliation of Indigenous groups across North America, Australia and Africa, is beginning to claim big, impactful victories. In 2025, a group of Catholic nuns in a \$2.6m property around Lake Wisconsin sold their land back to the Lake Superior Chippewa tribe for \$30,000 (the price they paid for it in the 1960s). That same week, almost 7,000 hectares of the Sierra

Nevada were returned to the Tule River Indian tribe and in May of the same year, more than 20,000 hectares of the California Blue Creek watershed were handed back to the Yurok tribe.

Despite the UK government declaring categorically in 2024: "We do not accept that rights can be applied to nature or Mother Earth" in response to a global legal campaign to add such rights to the UN charter, on a local basis, the rights of nature campaign in England is flourishing. Last year, Lewes District Council became the first local authority in England to formally recognise the rights of the River Ouse, with several surrounding parish and district councils following suit.

The idea that nature should have legal personhood became influential in England after the 2017 Whanganui River claims settlement act in New Zealand, which handed governance of the river from the exclusive domain of its colonisers, the crown, back to the Iwi, the Maori people who live in its catchment. It raises the question: if the crown can acknowledge and repair its crimes against communities and ecologies 12,000 miles away, why not here, in England?

In England, we are often so busy arguing over the story of our nation that we ignore the land it is built on. While some continue to deny our culpability in colonialism, we are a long way from recognising its dynamics on our own land. The central purpose of colonialism was to roll out the Eurocentric concept of land as exclusive property in order to exploit and extract resources for the enrichment of its owners; and the great walled estates of England were established for precisely the same reason.

The enclosure of the commons, and the colonisation of Terrae nullius (the unmapped expanses of the globe), were expressions of the same impulse of “improvement” (the Georgian term for efficient profit extraction). If we continue to deny the ecocidal nature of this property system, we ignore the plain and simple point made by reparationist and pan-African scholar Esther Xosei that England is also in desperate need of repair.

Still, Grahame can rest easy. The initiative on the Hardwick estate is not socialism; the Land Back revolution goes way beyond party politics, because it incorporates nature into the dialogue. It reminds a nation that is in desperate need of a new story that it is not the manor houses, the National Gallery, or even Stonehenge that form the foundation of our national identity: it is the chalk streams, watermeadows and bluebell woods, the hedgehogs, the bats and the willow tits: nature is England's most valuable heritage asset.

The Medicine Tree: Repairing the Rotten Roots of England by Nick Hayes is published by Allen Lane (£25). Subscribers receive a 20% discount off RRP when ordering from observershop.co.uk

The networker

John Naughton

What are universities for is a question AI can help answer

One of the great pleasures of working in a university is that, at this time of the year, a fresh cohort

of bright young school leavers arrives to begin the next phase of their lives. For many of them, it will be their first experience of living away from home, the first time they will be treated as adults and the first time that they may understand Wordsworth's lines about how it might be bliss to be alive, but "to be young was very heaven".

There is, however, one thing about the current crop of freshers that's different from their predecessors of four years ago. Many, if not most, of them are “AI natives” in the way children used to be “digital natives”

– that is, adept at using a technology they don't understand. And they are entering educational institutions that still don't know what to do about the technology.

Luckily, one of the world's great universities – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – has also been grappling with that problem. It set up a large working group consisting of undergraduate and graduate students, academics from every school, and staff from relevant units, including the MIT libraries, and teaching and learning lab. It spent five months thinking about and discussing what to do about AI. It has now published a report that is the most impressive attempt I've seen to confront an issue that could be the undoing of many universities.

The report's central message is that AI should be approached as a question of what a university is for rather than, as now, a question about cheating and academic integrity. The brief the MIT group was given at the outset was the kind of bureaucratic one that you'll find in most universities at the moment: assess AI use at MIT, identify innovations in teaching and student assessment, and propose an AI-use policy. But the team dug deeper and concluded: “Beyond its implications for specific subjects and disciplines, the advent of AI demands a broader, holistic reassessment of the nature, scope and purpose of higher education today.”

It's right. Universities are supposed to be institutions that create, curate and pass on knowledge. Large language models, as the psychologist Alison Gopnik

and her colleagues have argued, are “cultural technologies”, like books, libraries and language itself – tools people use to access the knowledge created by them. So, whether we like it or not, universities and AI are in the same business.

Harassed vice-chancellors at UK universities may – understandably – chafe at philosophical debates about the function of the university that go back to John Henry Newman. But there are some takeaways from the MIT report that are more immediately relevant. First, detection and policing of AI use is a dead end. The tools produce too many false positives (especially for non-native and neurodivergent students). And – more importantly – they undermine the relationship between teachers and students.

What I'm reading

John Naughton's recommendations

Second, assessment needs to be rethought from the ground up. Most of the proposed “solutions” (oral exams, portfolios, and out-of-class work combined with in-class conversation, etc) all need academics’ time, physical space and probably smaller classes. The bottom line is that an AI-aware curriculum costs money, which is bad news for cash-strapped institutions.

Industrial action

The Next Industrial Revolution is a nice review by Andrew Curry of David Mindell's history book The New Lunar Society.

The full Danish

Francis Fukuyama's

Getting to Denmark

looks at the way Donald

Trump has vapourised

trust in the US.

Man of the people

A lovely essay in Aeon by Emilie Prattico is Reasoning Together, which pays homage to the late Jürgen Habermas, the great advocate for deliberative democracy.

Third, there have to be clear guidelines about AI use or non-use in every discipline or course, and the reasons for them have to be transparent and understood by students and teachers. In some cases, AI use may be unrestricted because it doesn't undermine the learning objectives; in others, it may be allowed as a support tool only. Also, in certain cases, students may be required to use AI to complete and assignment in a specified manner; and then there will be cases where its use is strictly verboten. In pedagogy, no one size fits all.

Universities can no more ignore AI than they could ignore the printing press. The arrival of the technology could give them a new mission to add to their original ones of creating, curating and transmitting knowledge: to demonstrate AI's potential for human augmentation. If they get this right, they'll turn out graduates who use the technology with judgment rather than as tentative prompters. And then we'll have an answer to the question of what are universities for that even cabinet ministers may understand.

Critics

Theatre

Rory Kinnear, Thomas Flynn and Natalia Osipova in The Standard of Living. Manuel Harlan

The creative economy

James Graham's dynamic play about John Maynard Keynes and his Russian ballerina wife artfully balances its state-of-the-nation message with an impassioned defence of the arts

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Theatre short

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Sohoplace, London W1; until

19 December

Sobering stuff. No one could read Edward Albee's play of marital warfare as an advert for drinking, but after three and a half hours of bloodsport, of bottomless reserves of bourbon and brutality, who can blame the impulse? Alcohol is a magic potion for playwrights: it can make unbelievable characters do believable things. For George and Martha, the desperate couple in this psychodrama, it is both fuel for and fortification against a terror of the real world. A blurring. The opposite of truth. The characters orbit around the drinks trolley and around a subject – their absent son – as if for reinforcement, yet these are the forces that most threaten to destabilise them.

None of which makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? sound much like fun, yet Marianne Elliott's revival is emphatically that: very vicious, very funny, pulling and punching with the rhythm of a comedy. The play's title is an intellectual joke, and there are plenty more of those as George and Martha – floundering professor and flailing professor's daughter – dismantle one another with staggering eloquence, if not

Susannah Clapp

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The Standard of Living Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1; until 12 December

As usual in a James Graham play, the subject is immediate, evident – and more than it seems. The hero (not too big a word) of The Standard of Living is the economist Maynard Keynes, whose achievements could charge up a series of documentaries and

efficiency. It is hard to think of two more fluent actors than Billy Crudup and Gillian Anderson, in the roles made loud and famous by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: lines are spun, spat, stuttered and slurred. They land – hard – then linger. "I swear, if you existed, I'd divorce you," says Anderson to the grey-haired cipher. "Martha? Rubbing alcohol for you?" Crudup offers, pouring scorn with her gin.

Elliott has the drama play out organically: slow, slow, then quick. Sensibly, she underscores an affection – a confidence, at least

– between the pair; why else would they stay? The two are sparring partners, and this, a stage in the round, is their ring, their arena of

light up a horde of hearts: he argued against the severity of German reparations after the First World War, supported the Beveridge Report, was involved in launching the World Bank and the IMF, and set up the Arts Council. I anticipated biography and perhaps a state-of-nation play to chime with Graham's Dear England. I got both, but the motor of the play was unexpected: a plea for the dynamic effect of the imagination.

Graham has seized on a dramatic central aspect of Keynes's life: his marriage, a match that at first sight looks like a contradiction, an

conspiracy. Two guests – young, blond and green – begin, like the audience, bearing necessary witnesses to their performative cruelty, and end up punch-drunk. Nick (Josh Dylan, utterly convincing as the misogynist in marriage-material clothing) and Honey (Phoebe Horn, unravelling in insipid yellow) are collateral damage in their twisted games.

In the stalls, noses pressed up to the action, spectators see Anderson's every twitch and moue – chinks in a smooth armour. Her unfocused eyes tell of drunkness, her tottering of fragility. She is brash, yet her voice strains: indeed, it is strangulated. Her rage sparks up and dissipates like cigarette smoke. Crudup, her

argument of its own. When Keynes took up with the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova the excitement was similar to that generated by Marilyn Monroe's marriage to Arthur Miller: Brainbox marries Pin-up. Crowds gathered outside the registry office. Bloomsbury group friends – Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey – were sceptical: Lopokova was noisy (all that leaping around practising, all that prattle), emotional and mistress of apparently imperfect (actually, rather rich) English. What's more, goddammit, Keynes was homosexual: he had long been in love with the artist Duncan Grant. Early on in Nicholas Hytner's production of The Standard of Living Keynes is seen exiting from the gents with young sailors; he goes on adding to the list of lovers

– stableboy, clergyman – he keeps in a little notebook: the accounting habit dies hard. Yet his marriage was exceptionally harmonious.

The Bloomsbury scenes are stiff, though fluently acted by Naomi Frederick as an etiolated Woolf and Thomas Flynn as labile, irresistible Grant. The conversation sags under celebrity greetings. Bob Crowley's monumental design, painted in the style of Bell and Grant with vases, fruit and elongated figures, finely captures the imagery but looms over the action rather than, as at their shared Charleston house, snugly enclosing it. Elsewhere, the outside world is impressively ushered in, as the huge panels heave with news footage.

Scenes from political life are sometimes pop-up encounters – a brief chat with Beveridge about the NHS; a short pow-wow at Bretton Woods. The crucial differences between Keynes and his one-time acolyte turned adversary Friedrich Hayek – the State interventionist versus the laissez-fairer – are crisply summarised: in harsh times Hayek says “tighten your belt” while Keynes says “buy a new belt”. In a resonant scene the two men fire-watch together during the Blitz, bound by past respect and current disagreement,

dishevelled foil, is more mad professor than Burton's brooding George: patronising, pedantic, always with that fatuous, passive smile. At first, we think that smile is mocking, then wonder if there is love in it. Finally, Crudup reveals, it is full of glee. George, the good sport, does not submit to blows because he is battle weary, but because the rules of engagement are his.

It is difficult, even in the tan leather glow of Miriam Buether's mid-century sitting room, to cast the mind back to 1962 and so imagine just how vitriolic an attack this play would have been on American family values: these two households, both alike in indignity, with their embarrassment of regrets and

Film

Wendy Ide on the second round of Sorkin v Zuckerberg, page 24

The subtlety in Graham's so approachable play is in suggesting a congruence between Keynes's economics and Lopokova's art

'Chinks in a smooth armour': Gillian Anderson as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Johan Persson

as the city burns. Future policy is visualised in a moment. Hayek's economic treatise is snatched up into a blue handbag: the beginnings of Thatcherism.

The relationship between Keynes and his future wife develops slowly. The economist went to the ballet to look at male dancers and dismissed Lopokova for having a “stiff bottom”. Gradually he became fascinated by her grace, vivacity and cheek – actually, her cheeks. On first meeting, she suggested he pinch her leg.

Apparently buttoned-up (though not with the sailors), tremendous Rory Kinnear dominates by intellectual conviction. Excellent costumes by Jenny Beavan (she of Merchant Ivory) set him apart from his Bloomsbury comrades: they in pale tawny and emerald and flowing lines; he in a dark suit and tie, a watch-chain stretching across his waistcoat. Their limbs look heavy; his look coiled. He opens up warmly yet remains contained. The reserve seems so natural that it is hard to imagine him otherwise. Yet my first impression of his talent drew on diametrically different gifts: in Hytner's 2007 production of The Man of Mode, he gave the comic performance of the year as another Sir – Sir Fopling Flutter.

Natalia Osipova, principal with the Royal Ballet, first makes the case for Lopokova's quality without saying a word, dancing through the action in the scarlet and white plumage of Stravinsky's Firebird. She catches her candour too though the variation of her English – at once direct and baroque – is underplayed, as is the crushing snobbery inflicted on her by the Bloomsbury group. She kept Keynes alive and she kept him alert to new possibilities.

The subtlety in Graham's so approachable play is in suggesting a congruence between Keynes's economics and Lopokova's art. Sitting tight – laissez faire – is not enough. Humans must leap, act, intervene. The arts can help us imagine a better life; economics can help build it. Go: Andy Burnham, Lisa Nandy.

infidelities. When Martha swaps her gown for a pair of trousers, the guests can hardly contain their excitement at her daring, unprepared for the scandals ahead. That shock is never quite shared by the audience, however. Gripping to the period and to the letter, the production never reaches towards the contemporary.

Stuck in the past, then: yet the momentum pushes forwards, even as George and Martha keep returning to old grievances, old fantasies, learned patterns of back-and-forth, attack-retreat. Buether's stage revolves gradually – a winding clock, a dog chasing its tail – before settling at a standstill. A truce. A sudden, sober steadying. Katherine Cowles

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Classical

Scream time

Set in a post-apocalyptic bunker, Evgeny Titov's bloody, enigmatic staging of Wagner's last opera is not for the faint-hearted. Plus, an aurally shattering Bruckner

Fiona Maddocks

Parsifal

Royal Opera House, London WC2;

until 17 October

Philharmonia/Salonen

Royal Festival Hall, London SE1

Wagner pushed every element to the furthest extreme in Parsifal (1882), his last opera. Action is minimal. The work, which he called a “sacred drama”, adopts Christian ritual but splatters it with Buddhism, Rosicrucianism, Greek tragedy and French chivalric poetry. Religiosity is the mode, sex the obsession. With its emphasis on suffering, illness and wounds that never heal, it can feel fetid. The score, confounding our resistance, is Wagner’s most ambitious, intense and beautiful.

mid-career and based mainly in Berlin, has a reputation for being dynamic and radical. Iconoclasm is built into the tradition of Wagner staging. Parsifal can be set in any time, any place. Glyndebourne's 2025 production gave us a striking Victorian family drama. Stefan Herheim's pivotal 2008 staging for Bayreuth compressed the dark recent history of Germany, from the 1880s to the 1950s, into its three acts.

The Royal Opera's new staging, under the baton of music director Jakub Hrūša, is by Evgeny Titov, making his company debut. First, the music, all four hours of it. This was a night of superlatives. Hrūša shows his innate understanding of Wagner, shaping, urging, taking time as needed and drawing brilliant and nuanced playing from his musicians. To hear every part of the orchestra play with such freedom, as if willingly in thrall to Hrūša's unaffected and generous passion, is a rare pleasure. We can keenly anticipate his Ring cycle next year.

The Kazakhstan-born Titov, now

Titov and his creative team – sets by Etienne Pluss, costumes by Esther Bialas, lighting by DM Wood – take us to a post-apocalyptic bunker. The staging, initially bewildering, proves coherent and violent, but convincing. Much is enigmatic. Concrete pillars advance, recede, rise and fall, almost imperceptibly, each variation lit with shadowy gradation. Light comes only from banks of CCTV screens, animated by a grotesque flower-maiden video (Otto Pichler as Mama Flower), or old master paintings showing details of Christ's Passion.

Haemophobes beware: blood leaks everywhere. Amfortas's nasty wound – caused by female seduction (no mention of the king's own part in the tango) – is exposed and barely congealed. The holy grail is the blood itself, each drip caught from his seeping abdomen as the knights process by. It's as repellent as it sounds, but belongs to an entity that is detailed and serious.

The cast could hardly be more rewarding. As Amfortas, ragged,

'The staging, initially bewildering, proves coherent and violent': the Royal Opera's dystopian Parsifal. Marc Brenner

Many a Parsifal looks better fully dressed. Not De Barbeyrac, who convinced as the boyish holy fool, clothes half torn off

Christlike, the German baritone Christian Gerhaher gave the performance of a lifetime. His voice was focused, sustained, lyrical and yet managed to convey his character's torment, expressed through Wagner's tugging, dissonant lines. The Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, febrile but powerful, captured every facet of the mysterious Kundry, wild woman, temptress, supplicant. The British bass Brindley Sherratt brought wise acumen to the demands of the knight-elder Gurnemanz. In supporting roles, Mark Stone's shiny suited magician Klingsor had smarmy arrogance. James Platt was strong if invisible as the ailing Titurel. Knights – soloists as well as chorus – esquires and flower maidens (stylish in flower-petal helmets and silver pleather shorts) were all expertly drilled.

That leaves the title role, sung with bright gleam and transparency by the French tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac. Many a Parsifal looks better fully dressed. Not De Barbeyrac, who convinced winningly as the boyish holy fool, clothes half torn off as he faces erotic temptation in the arms of Kundry. Parsifal is first seen killing a swan. He ends here – controversially – enacting another, far worse one-man massacre. Is this redemption? Many will dislike Titov's conclusion. Parsifal has never been about liking or, necessarily, understanding. It remains, even after many encounters, one of the most unknowable and addictive operas in the canon.

Anton Bruckner (1824-96), who regarded Wagner as his musical idol, attended the feted premiere of Parsifal in Bayreuth and was so overwhelmed that he fell to his knees speechless. Last Sunday, the Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen gave an aurally shattering performance of Bruckner's Symphony No 4, not directly Wagnerian but similarly monumental. Before it, Leif Ove Andsnes was a sparkling and imaginative soloist in the Piano Concerto No 3 by Beethoven, god of both Wagner and Bruckner.

In the symphony, blazingly played by all, especially the mighty brass, one section got its own rare ovation: the violas, who have a tune to themselves in the slow movement lasting a full 32 bars. At the end, their outstanding section leader, Scott Dickinson, turned to clap his team. Then Salonen did likewise and urged them to their feet. Shyly, they all stood up, unused to the spotlight. They deserved every decibel of that extra noisy applause.

Ode to joylessness

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Laura Cumming

The 90s: Art and Fashion

Tate Britain, London SW1; until

14 February 2027

Tate Britain's celebration of the 1990s, curated by Vogue's Edward Enninful, is one long magazine spread after another – in which a decade of art never looked so tired

Goldie beams out of a giant photo in the foyer, teeth ablaze, eyes glowing with pure elation. Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss drag on fags, long legs gleaming in the streetlights, above Jim Lambie's multicoloured floor, with its sticky tape striations, an op-art dazzle that thrums with the bank of tellies pumping out Oasis, garage, drum'n'bass. You want to be back there right now.

Or do you? There has never been a greater tension between the entrance corridor at Tate Britain – exhilarating, superbly curated, open and free to all – and the exclusive show within, where seven galleries have been given over to the whims of former Vogue editor Edward Enninful. Some YBA classics have been slotted in: Sarah Lucas's Chicken Knickers and her stuffed-stockings bunny girl, Tracey Emin's most pornographic neon signs, Damien Hirst's baby sharks in tanks on a circular rail out of Francis Bacon. Paintings by Gary Hume and Chris Ofili, Gillian Wearing dancing to unheard music in Peckham, southeast London, a couple of Helen Chadwick lightboxes mounted like cigarette machines on a side wall. Cheap as chips, since they all belong to Tate.

So that's the art, but you've seen it 10 times before, to misquote David Bowie, strangely absent from this show. Perhaps he wasn't cool enough for Enninful, who became fashion director of $i-D$ in 1990, at the age of 18. And thus begins spread after fashion spread of etiolated boys and girls, displayed on the walls like so many magazine layouts. To call it joyless would be an understatement.

This is the era of lo-fi photography. Juergen Teller's naked Kristen McMenamy with fading bruises, appendix scar and Marlboro Light. His young girls knocking on the studio door, pelvis bones poking through their Topshop trousers. It is Wolfgang Tillmans and his pals,

the club scene, the rise of Gay Pride, floor to ceiling in apparently casual shots of all sizes taped to the wall, as boring as they wanted to be.

I can't understand how Tate Britain could have subjugated itself – and its art – to the ex-Vogue supremo with such servility

Tillmans turned that no-style-but-every-style look, originally for the Face and i-D, into an aesthetic so successful it won him the Turner prize in 2000. That is the intended triangulation at Tate Britain: between the makers of music, looks and art. Corinne Day, who started out as a model and became a photographer, is the leading light here, along with Vivienne Westwood.

Day's street strays, sometimes off their heads, dressed in mismatched vintage clothes, seem to look back at her as their equal. One of her 1993 photographs from Vogue, originally in an article entitled "Under-exposure", shows the 19-year-old Moss in knickers, close to tears, having just argued with her then boyfriend.

The sequence was excoriated as heroin chic, but some of Day's subjects were actually in rehab. Models with skeletal bodies and shadows beneath their eyes, half-clad and half-alive after a night's clubbing are photographed by David Sims and Craig McDean, some for the paradoxically expensive couture label of Jil Sander.

Up all night? They make it look like hard work in the wall-to-wall photographs of committed clubbers at the Ministry of Sound, Club Colosseum, the Haçienda, or in Ayia Napa. This gallery needed actual sound, not a Spotify playlist. There is history here, of a kind, but there is more vitality in the stuffed Ozwald Boateng suits in the gallery next door, razor-sharp with their brilliant silk linings.

The 90s is quite amazingly free of context throughout. You would never know the art market crashed in 1991, or that the balance shifted from museums to small galleries – White Cube, Sadie Coles – still less that the YBAs were all doing it for themselves.

You wouldn't even know that Germany reunified, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Gulf War broke out, or that Diana, Princess of Wales died.

Indie grunge might have prevailed, but so did Blairism, the “third way” and thinktankers in polo shirts. The Spice Girls are present, though only as a cropped lineup of their platform-soled trainers, but not Geri Halliwell in her union jack dress or Noel Gallagher with his union jack guitar. Cool Britannia doesn’t get a mention, even though its young have become today’s mightiest stars. And God forbid there should be any celebration of the epochal Sensation show – the shark, the tent, the blood head – organised in 1997 by Charles Saatchi at the Royal Academy.

Yinka Shonibare gets in because his dandified art turns on dissonant fabrics. Westwood is there in her full pompadour period; Alexander McQueen with his Joan of Arc season. By now, we are into nonstop Vogue and the stultifying inanity of the catwalk. We are also about a million miles away from Goldie, joyous on a Sunday night in London's Hoxton, and instead deep into the consumerist establishment.

For these glossy magazines were on every stand, along with Playboy and Loaded. To me, they represented the exact opposite of the real freedoms of the 90s: to be and do and say what you believed in, to live in low-rent flats and go dancing for almost nothing, to find art in freezing studios and music by word of mouth. I can't understand how Tate Britain could have subjugated itself – and a decade of its art – to the ex-Vogue supremo with such servility.

But the good news is that the spirit of the 90s comes alive again in the testimonies of artists, musicians and writers in the catalogue. Skip the show and buy the book.

'Up all night? They make it look like hard work': Kate Moss photographed by Corinne Day in the Under-Exposure shoot. above, Sarah Lucas's Chicken Knickers.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London/Sarah Lucas

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Film

Film of the week

Meta more phobic

Aaron Sorkin returns to the Facebook story with a propulsive drama about a reporter examining the company's insidious influence

– and this time,

the tech bros are no

laughing matter

Wendy Ide

The Social Reckoning

(112 mins, 15) Directed by Aaron Sorkin; starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong

The screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin is fascinated by the dial-shift moments of history; the kind of seismic events that permanently reshape the cultural and political landscape. This is what drew him to the early days of Facebook: his Oscar-winning screenplay for David Fincher's The Social Network captured the simmering tensions and rivalry between the creators of the social media platform that had already, by the film's release in 2010, revolutionised the way society connected. And it's what draws him back to the subject once again, with The Social Reckoning, a propulsive investigative drama, written and directed by Sorkin, that examines the ever-expanding reach and insidious influence of Facebook and its parent company, Meta.

You wonder if the Sorkin of the simpler days of The Social Network had an inkling of the immense capacity for harm afforded by an addictive tool for disseminating information (and misinformation) into the brains of the masses? Did any of us fully grasp it then? Certainly, there's a change in the temperature and tone of this film.

While the earlier movie was a breezy, sharp-witted comedy drama with a keen sense of the absurdity of its key characters, its follow-up has reached the conclusion that much about Meta – and in particular Mark Zuckerberg (played with a chilling, reptilian stillness by Jeremy Strong) – is no longer a laughing matter. That’s not to say the film is without humour: it’s a Sorkin script, after all. Like all his writing, it is peppered with quirks and zingers, delivered at a screwball pace.

His route back into the continuing Facebook story is through the real-life data scientist Frances Haugen (an excellent Mikey Madison, all serrated edges and impatience), an employee in Facebook's civic integrity team who, when we meet her at the picture's opening, is becoming alarmed by the company's practices. Her attempts to raise concerns are shut down by colleagues and superiors (to be fair, her intensity, coupled with the thick wad of flashcards she brandishes, might well be off-putting). So when the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) speculatively gets in touch, Frances reaches out with caution.

It's an enjoyably abrasive relationship from the outset. Jeff is a gifted political reporter but knows almost nothing about technology; he can't even work out his rented car's satnav (which almost costs him the job before he's been hired). Frances decides that, at best, he's a luddite and, at worst, an irredeemable dunce.

Jeremy Strong plays Zuckerberg with a chilling, reptilian stillness

What's more, she takes every opportunity to tell him so. The dialogue is crisp, eloquent and very obviously written; Madison and White do their best to claim the words for their characters but the main voice we hear is Sorkin's. How you feel about this will depend on where you stand on the balance between authenticity and the showy, polished entertainment value of the screenplay. For me, the zesty parrying elevates a film that otherwise might have featured too many stagnant shots of people frowning at computer screens.