Fact check: Photograph shows Boris Johnson and ex-wife at university
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The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Progress by Samuel Miller McDonald review – humanity's greatest myth?
Everything is in decline, argues the geographer Samuel Miller McDonald. Democracy and free speech are in freefall. Inequality is soaring, with the 1% scooping up ever-larger shares of global wealth. These days, the US has a Gini coefficient – the most common international measurement of inequality – on a par with slave-owning Ancient Rome. Maternal mortality rates for American millennials are three times higher than those of their parents' generation – and this in the world's richest society. Global life expectancy is falling. So, too, are food standards. Outside a few bourgeois sourdough enclaves, real bread has vanished. In its place we get mass-produced, spongy, tasteless 'pseudo-bread' – as Guy Debord lamented in The Encyclopedia of Nuisances. In an earlier age, there would have been bread riots. Now? Just muted indigestion. What accounts for our complacency? False consciousness, claims McDonald in this sparky polemic against the myth of progress. We have been hoodwinked by elite propaganda. The 'progress narratives' of the ruling classes assure us that history only moves forward, that we should trust the system and surrender agency to our betters. Even when protests have erupted, they have mostly sought modest tweaks rather than revolution. But progress, argues McDonald, is a false prophet. History hasn't followed a tidy upward arc. Moreover, what counts as progress has often produced huge collateral damage, including ecological devastation. There was a time when human beings had a 'commensalistic' relationship with nature, turning on veneration rather than exploitation. Embracing egalitarianism, most primitive societies didn't have hierarchies of class or gender. Then, around 3000BCE, the 'parasitic' economy emerged. Mesopotamians were the first to behave as though nature was no longer to be communed with but subdued. Religion took the place of animism, preaching dominion over the Earth. For McDonald the Epic of Gilgamesh is the first piece of progress propaganda: in it, the eponymous hero kills the forest guardian, tames the wild, and builds a city, filling it with bread and beer to the unbridled joy of his acolytes. The Book of Genesis follows suit. God commands Adam and Eve to 'subdue' the Earth and tame every living thing. Later, Christianity – by then a far cry from Jesus's radicalism – proved useful to Constantine, who saw in monotheism a handy formula: one god, one empire, one emperor. Fast-forward a millennium, and capitalism picks up the baton. Progress, now secularised, means capital formation: wealth siphoned from the masses to the enlightened few, who return to us the bric-a-brac of modernity – antibiotics and air fryers and suchlike. The logic of extraction remains unchanged; nature and proletariat alike suffer. McDonald's book is a satisfying corrective to the smugness of thinkers such as Steven Pinker, who insist that conditions only ever improve. Yet he oversells his case with sweeping judgments. His account of religion, for instance, amounts to little more than a crude reprise of Marx: it's all opium for the masses, a tool to pacify resentment. But that's far too simple. From the Peasants' Revolt to the Taiping Rebellion, Christianity has supplied radicals with a script for inverting power structures. Equally damaging is McDonald's uncritical endorsement of David Graeber and David Wengrow's vigorously contested claim that Enlightenment ideas came from Indigenous America – specifically from the Wendat diplomat Kondiaronk – a theory historians such as David A Bell have dismissed as fantasy. On the latter's account, the French nobleman Baron de Lahontan wasn't so much lifting his ideas from Kondiaronk as putting his own progressive views into the mouth of a naïf – a common literary device in the early modern period. Readers may find all the doom-mongering a bit much. Indeed, there's a whiff of the swivel-eyed prophet about McDonald. And like all doomsayers, he is sure that the end-times are nigh. 'Climate change and ecological collapse,' we are told, 'are very likely to cause political fragmentation that nullifies legal and cultural precedents like [slavery] abolition … If market economies continue, there is little reason to assume they will not return to trade in indentured human beings.' Very likely? The confidence is grating and ignores the simple fact that we no longer live in a labour-intensive economy. If anything, AI is making the return of slavery less, not more, likely. McDonald's dismissal of the possibility of mass investment in nuclear energy in a 'neoliberal' world has already aged poorly, with enormous sums being poured into small modular reactors this year. All of which goes to show that the predictions business is a tough one: things can just as easily go the other way. Progress: A History of Humanity's Worst Idea by Samuel Miller McDonald is published by HarperCollins (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine calls for greater pressure on Russia ahead of Witkoff visit
Update: Date: 2025-08-05T07:39:24.000Z Title: Diageo warns of costly impact of US tariffs Content: Diageo, maker of Guinness, Smirnoff vodka and Johnnie Walker whiskey, has said Donald Trump's tariffs on wine and spirits will reduce its profits by €173m (£150m). The world's biggest spirits maker is the latest company in the EU to reveal the high cost of the US president's new tariff trade wars. On Tuesday it forecast flat 2026 sales, raised its estimate of the impact from tariffs, and hiked its cost-savings target by about €108m. The EU had hoped wines and spirits would remain duty free after Trump and European Commission president sealed the tariff deal at Trump's Scottish golf course eight days ago but negotiations are ongoing. Sources say talks on spirits are more advanced than for wine. Update: Date: 2025-08-05T07:33:48.000Z Title: Morning opening: Increase the pressure on Russia, says Ukraine Content: At least one person died, and 12 were injured after another round of Russian attacks on Ukraine overnight, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy accusing Russia of trying to 'intimidate frontline cities and communities' by attacking civilian targets. Zelenskyy's most senior aide, Andriy Yermak, was more blunt: 'Their war is with the civilian railway, trains, residential buildings. Ukraine strikes at military targets, Russia – whatever it can reach.' But responding to the attacks, Zelenskyy once again called on the US and the EU to turn up the pressure on Russia by fast-tracking much-promised sanctions and secondary sanctions on countries supporting its war. 'The world is now seeing that sanctions against Russia and secondary sanctions against all those who help it profit from oil can work if they are strong enough. So the pressure must be increased, and it will certainly work for peace,' he said. His comments come a day before US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected in Moscow for another round of high-level talks with Russia, possibly with President Vladimir Putin. Elsewhere, I will be looking at the latest from the European Commission on the EU-US tariff deal, and will bring you all other key updates from across Europe here. It's Tuesday, 5 August 2025, it's Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live. Good morning.
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Trump praises Sydney Sweeney's ad - after hearing she's a Republican
"She's a registered Republican?" Trump said. "Oh, now I love her ad. Is that right? You'd be surprised at how many people are Republicans. That's one I wouldn't have known, but I'm glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic." More: Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle jeans ad sparks controversy: Here's why Over the weekend, Buzzfeed News first reported Sweeney's party affiliation. A person named Sydney B. Sweeney registered as Republican in Monroe County, Florida in June 2024, according to public voting records. Sweeney's middle name is Bernice. USA TODAY was unable to verify whether it's the same Sweeney. Trump, in an Aug. 4 post on Truth Social, his social media app, heaped additional praise on the actress. "Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the 'HOTTEST' ad out there. It's for American Eagle, and the jeans are 'flying off the shelves.' Go get 'em Sydney!" Trump said. The American Eagle ad campaign featuring the "Euphoria" actress relies on a play on words - "jeans" and "genes"- to describe the 27-year-old Sweeney. The slogan: "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans." In one of several videos for the campaign, Sweeney, clad in a denim-on-denim fit, says: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color." "My jeans are blue," she continues in the ad, with jeans doing double duty as the camera pans across her true blue denim fit and her blue eyes. Critics have said the jeans campaign amounts to a dog whistle for eugenics and a glorification of whiteness. More: White House calls Sydney Sweeney ad outrage 'cancel culture run amok' White House communications director Steven Cheung last week slammed the negative reaction to Sweeney's ad as "cancel culture run amok." "This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024," Chueng wrote on X July 29, in response to an MSNBC op-ed that said it was "fair" to condemn Sweeney's ad. He added that people are "tired of this" and using a profanity. Trump, in his same Aug. 4 social media post, slammed luxury automobile company Jaguar for its "stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement" that featured men wearing colorful skirts in a new company rebrand. Adrian Mardell, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, stepped down following criticism of the ad and plummeting car sales. "THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER!" Trump said of Jaguar. "The CEO just resigned in disgrace, and the company is in absolute turmoil. Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad." Trump then took a shot at an A-list celebrity: "Woke singer" Taylor Swift - one of the biggest stars in the world - claiming she's "NO LONGER HOT" since he made clear "that I can't stand her (HATE!)." "The tide has seriously turned -- Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be," Trump said. Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
