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New Statesman
a day ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
A Trump-shaped elephant
Photo byWhen Donald Trump's around it's the only story in town – even if that town is Westminster and the President of the United States is nearly 500 miles away (Proclaimers, eat your heart out) on his Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire, Scotland. There has been loads to pore over in terms of Keir Starmer's attempts to play nice with the most unpredictable man in the world. There's his awkward response to Trump's revelation that he's 'not a fan' of the London mayor – a shame, as Sadiq Khan told a podcast last November that he would love Trump to come to London: 'Let me show him around our wonderfully diverse communities. Let me take him to a Pride march… Let me take him to a mosque'. There's the will-he-won't-he about Trump addressing Parliament during his state visit in September which falls during recess ('Maybe we should save it for another time' was the assessment of the former TV host, who knows how to leave an episode on a cliffhanger). And, of course, there are the tariffs on steel and pharmaceuticals Starmer is hoping to avoid with this meticulous diplomatic performance. No news on that yet – although at least the Prime Minister can console himself that the UK's position is better than that of the EU, which has been forced to accept a 15 per cent tariff deal with the US. Megan Gibson and Tom McTague dissect it all on the latest New Statesman podcast. The Trump show even managed to dominate Nigel Farage's address (now seemingly a weekly event) to the Westminster faithful on Monday morning. From the Reform HQ's brand new 'press briefing room' on the twenty-fourth floor of the Millbank Tower (once home to the Labour Party – and, more recently, Farage's Brexit referendum campaign group journalists were invited to hear all about how 'Britain is lawless', again. What Farage wanted to talk about was his latest champion, retired DCI Colin Sutton (of the Levi Bellfield serial killer case fame), who will lead a new task force on law and order for Reform, and also how crime – in particular, sexual violence against women and girls – is linked to uncontrolled immigration. What he was mostly asked about was Donald Trump. There was a particularly uncomfortable moment when Farage, having just railed about not letting dangerous sex offenders into the UK, was questioned on whether Trump – convicted of several criminal offences and found liable for sexual abuse in a civil court – was 'the right sort of person to be letting into this country'. 'I think there was a civil case, not a criminal case, am I right or am I wrong? Thank you,' the Reform leader replied testily, before quickly moving on. This is delicate territory for Farage. As we all know, Trump is not a popular figure in the UK: around 70 per cent of Brits have an unfavourable view of him. Crucially, this unpopularity extends across the political spectrum. Following the infamous Oval Office meeting with Zelensky in February, Trump's favourability in the UK went negative even amongst Reform supporters. Farage's affinity with the US President is one of the few attack lines against his party which actually seems to work (just listen to this exclusive podcast with polling analyst Steve Akehurst). Back in March, More In Common found that '50 per cent of Britons see Farage as 'in Trump's pocket' – something that 69 per cent of Britons see as a negative thing for a politician to be, including 47 per cent of Reform voters'. This might explain why Farage was so keen to dodge questions about his former buddy – which he did, every time a journalist tried to press him on why he hadn't been invited up to Turnberry or what he made of the Trump-Starmer talks. And yet, there in the front row of the Reform press conference were two very visible reminders of the links Farage has with the Maga movement: US conservative pundit Ann Coulter and James Orr, the right-wing Cambridge theology professor who just happens to be a close friend of JD Vance. Their presence was noted but skirted over, with Coulter described intriguingly as an 'observer'. On Friday, when Trump landed in the UK and announced 'Immigration is killing Europe', she tweeted simply 'I hope Nigel Farage is taking notes'. There she was in the room three days later taking her own. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe What is going on? As has become a theme, Farage is trying to have it both ways, flirting with the Maga movement – for attention, ideas, and support from US sources – while aiming to keep just enough distance to avoid repelling mainstream Brits. Trump isn't the only example of Reform experimenting with pushing the populist boundaries. Monday's conference kicked off with Zia Yusuf offering a diatribe against the Online Safety Act which came into force at the weekend, suggesting it was so 'dystopian' it would make Xi Jinping blush (which, to be totally honest, seems a bit unlikely). But a strong majority of British adults support age verification to view pornographic content online, and after last summer's riots two-thirds wanted social media companies to be held responsible for post inciting violence – the very thing Yusuf was raging against. The British public love banning things, and appear to be less along the libertarian free speech spectrum when it comes to online safety than Reform. Then there was the moment I asked Farage (and Sutton) how scrapping all police DEI roles would affect efforts to tackle the kind of toxic misogyny within forces that enabled officers like David Carrick and Wayne Couzens to abuse their positions to rape women, and what this said about Reform's purported focus on reducing sexual violence. Sutton blamed the conduct of both men on the austerity of Theresa May's Home Office, which didn't quite answer the question (not least because Carrick became a Met Police officer in 2001), while Farage dodged the question entirely. It's an area where two of Reform's stated aims – tackle violence against women and girls, and wage war with 'woke' – are in obvious conflict. The solution is to duck and fudge, hoping voters won't notice the contradictions. But Trump is the biggest risk, where Farage's position puts him outside the realm of popular opinion in the UK. Reform is going into the second year of this parliament leading the polls, with both Labour and the Conservatives struggling to cut through and show the unworkable 'cakeism' of it promises to invest huge amounts in public services like policing while simultaneously cutting taxes, all supposedly paid for by scrapping a few items like HS2 and net zero. Pointing out the numbers don't add up doesn't seem to be working to neutralise Farage. Would pointing at the Trump-shaped elephant in every room he walks into be more effective? After all, it worked in Canada. This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here [See also: Will Keir Starmer recognise Palestine?] Related
AU Financial Review
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- AU Financial Review
Are emojis killing written language?
Iwas shocked and dismayed to realise, a few years ago, that I was going to have to watch The Emoji Movie , which was made in 2017 by a mobile phone company, Sony, to promote the use of mobile phones by children. To my great regret, I allowed the film – comfortably among the worst pieces of entertainment ever made – to play in its entirety. I wish I had done something more rational, and enjoyable, such as beating myself unconscious with a frozen haddock. I do not think it is unreasonable to describe The Emoji Movie as an act of cultural terrorism, an attempt to spread hopelessness and anhedonia among all the people on whom it was inflicted. The people who made the film were clearly recruited to do so by a foreign power (America) with the intention of eroding other cultures, making us doubt the value of art itself. Anyone involved in the making of it is pure evil, and in a just, well-run world they would never work again. New Statesman
New Statesman
2 days ago
- Business
- New Statesman
All hail Emperor Trump
The US President is on a 4-day trip to his golf courses in Scotland. He has met with Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Wielding the 'bully-boy' threat of trade tariffs, the President is enjoying unprecedented influence. But should European leaders learn from the more combative approaches taken by Canada and France? Megan Gibson joins Tom McTague on the New Statesman podcast. [See also: Can Starmer and Trump come to an agreement on Gaza?] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
New Statesman
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Peter Kosminsky: We need a BBC that is brave
Photo by Bailey-Cooper/Alamy One could be forgiven for thinking that British television is at the strongest it has ever been. More than 12 million of us tuned in to watch the Gavin and Stacey finale. Mr Bates vs The Post Office sparked a wave of national anger and forced the government into action after years of journalist trying to raise awareness of the Horizon Post Office scandal. Baby Reindeer, Adolescence and Toxic Town have all been enormous successes on both sides of the Atlantic. But those at the very top of the industry are worried. 'We're in dire straits,' Peter Kosminsky, one of the UK's most highly respect TV professionals and the man behind the BBC's Wolf Hall, told the New Statesman podcast. While we are able to watch a variety of high-quality programming, dramas that are 'peculiarly British' are under threat of extinction. The likes of Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and Apple TV will not make them. 'The streamers say they're speaking to an international audience, and they make programmes that are of interest to an international audience,' Kosminsky explained. 'What they actually mean is American audiences.' 'Mr Bates vs The Post Office doesn't get made' in this world, he warns Kosminsky has worked in the television industry for 45 years, and for all of the UK's major public service broadcasters. A director, writer and producer, he has won every accolade possible: multiple Baftas, Royal Television Society awards, Golden Globes along with individual recognition for what he has personally contributed to British television. His most recent triumph was the final part of Wolf Hall, broadcast in 2024. But the cost of making high end drama, documentary and comedy has soared in recent years – 'by a factor of five or six', Kosminsky says. Not because of inflation, but because the streamers have driven up the costs. 'They've arrived here, competed to use our crews and our facilities, and they have deep pockets, and they pay a lot of money.' The homegrown sector – BBC, Channel 4 and ITV – have been priced out. They can't compete. 'It's interesting talking to Patrick Spence, the producer who developed Mr Bates vs The Post Office,' Kosminsky says. 'He said he wouldn't develop it now. Why? Because there would be no prospect of it getting made. And that's really worrying.' Both Mr Bates and Wolf Hall were turned down by all the big streamers, Kosminsky told the New Statesman. Actors and executives on both took significant pay cuts to make sure they even made it to screen. Both Kosminsky and executive producer Colin Callender waived 90 per cent of their production fee. Peter Straughan who wrote the adaptation and actor Mark Rylance who played Cromwell 'also made a huge financial sacrifice'. Kosminsky dismisses those who cite the success of Adolescence or Toxic Town – both written by Jack Thorne and both snapped up by Netflix – as a challenge to his argument. 'Adolescence was a fantastic drama, and I applaud Netflix for making it. But just stop and think for a moment. What's adolescence about at root? It's about a murder carried out in a school of one pupil by another pupil. Not a problem they're unfamiliar with in America.' The same goes with Toxic Town, Kosminsky says of the drama depicting the fight by a group of Corby mothers to get justice for their children damaged by contaminated waste from the nearby steelworks. Stop again and think about the subject, Kosminsky says. 'Anyone watched Erin Brockovich recently?' Reflecting on his career, Kosminsky is someone trying to 'challenge the orthodoxy'. He wants to ask uncomfortable questions of the rich and powerful. A television maker, yes, but a public service journalist at heart. Audiences don't want to be 'harangued all the time', he says, 'but occasionally it's our job to say, hang on a minute, have you thought about it like this? And actually, are you really comfortable with this? And if not, what could we possibly do about it?' He has made powerful dramas on the Israel-Palestine conflict (The Promise), British peacekeepers who bear witness to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (Warriors), the experience of young British Muslims post 7/7 (Britz), and the role of scientist Dr David Kelly in the run-up to the Iraq War (The Government Inspector). Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Kosminsky places the blame for the British TV's current predicament firmly at the Government's door. He says they 'refuse' to help public service broadcasters make these programmes by rejecting the idea of a streamer's levy. A levy would make it compulsory for the streaming giants to pay 5 per cent of all money earned from British subscribers into a separate fund to be used to make programmes where a UK public service broadcaster is part of the commission. Similar schemes are in place in 17 European countries, including France and Germany where Netflix unsuccessfully tried to take legal action to prevent the levy being introduced. 'When I asked one of the founders of Netflix, whether they would challenge it in the court if it was brought in here in this country, he said, 'No, as long as it was a level playing field across all the streamers,'' Kosminsky said. So why is the Government saying no? 'Because they fear that it would be perceived by the current administration in America as a tariff.' This misses a fundamental point, he stressed. The streamers can get some of the levy back if they partner with UK broadcasters on productions. 'So, it's not a tariff,' Kosminsky insists: no other tariff allows you to get some of your money back. 'And the British government has failed to make that argument… I think the truth is that… the British government currently is disappointingly craven,' Kosminsky said in a damning rebuke. 'There's a proud 100-year tradition of public service broadcasting in this country. Stand up for it. Defend it. Don't just say, 'Yes, Donald; you're not very happy. Allow us to bow down and lick your boots.' It's pathetic. It's embarrassing.' On 22 July, the Guardian reported that Kosminsky had written to the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, accusing her of trying to 'bully' the BBC over its Gaza coverage. In recent weeks, Nandy has levelled intense criticism the corporation, refusing to say she has confidence in the leadership of its director general, Tim Davie, and asking why no one has lost their job over the broadcast of a documentary about Gaza, narrated by the 13-year-old son of a Hamas official. The letter reminded Nandy that past attempts by government to place political pressure on the BBC had ended badly. 'There's a dreadfully dishonourable tradition of this,' he told the New Statesman. (He cited both the suicide of David Kelly shortly after being revealed as the source for a BBC's reporting on the dodgy dossier behind the Iraq war, and the Thatcher government's attempt to pull a 1985 BBC documentary on Northern Ireland.) 'I think you have to be very careful as a government when you hold the purse strings of what is supposed to be an impartial broadcaster whose job is to speak truth to power in a democracy,' Kosminsky said. 'When you call for sackings and by implication the sacking of the chief executive of the BBC, I think that is deeply troubling… It feels like you're placing financial pressure on the organisation. You're saying, 'Do what I'm asking you to do and otherwise you won't get the money that we all know you want.'' Was the Culture Secretary really 'bullying' the BBC, or was she simply saying to its upper echelons, on behalf of the nation, 'get your house in order; we've had enough'? Davie's tenure has been plagued with difficulties. Soon into his role it emerged that the BBC religion editor Martin Bashir had misled Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, to secure a Panorama interview with her 25 years earlier. Davie bears no responsibility whatsoever for the original misdemeanour. A host of scandals followed: the failure to tackle multiple and ongoing complaints against former MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace; bullying allegations levelled at senior staff; serious criminality on the part of former news anchor Huw Edwards. Others involved editorial failures, including the live broadcasting of an anti-Semitic rant by Bob Vylan at this year's Glastonbury and the broadcasting of a Gaza documentary linked to Hamas. Does Nandy speak for the public when she says the corporation has 'a problem of leadership'? A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport told the Guardian that license fee payers rightly expect 'serious failures' to be acted upon so that they don't happen again. 'The BBC is operationally and editorially independent of government, and we will always defend this principle. However, there is an important distinction between being independent and being accountable.' If something has gone wrong, Kosminsky counters, it is for Ofcom or the BBC Board to hold the corporation to account. It is not the job of government. 'What I'm worried about is the chilling effect of this. You can see [it] in other Gaza programmes that the BBC has backed away from in recent years,' Kosminsky says, referring to the BBC's decision not to broadcast Gaza: Doctors under Attack, leaving it instead to Channel 4. Programmes like these, he says, are 'just too hot to handle because they're nervous of what the reaction will be in certain quarters. We need a BBC that is brave enough to not care about ruffling a few feathers.' Few would disagree with that final sentiment. But there are many in the industry, both inside the BBC and out, who see a wider problem. That perhaps the exodus of senior, long-standing editorial staff over the past five years has left the corporation depleted. There is a lack of diversity of thought, and years of both editorial and life experience have been lost, providing a vacuum at times in sound editorial judgement. 'Just because I'm saying the government should lay off the BBC and let [the board] and Ofcom do their job, it doesn't mean I'm saying I would personally endorse everything that's going on at the BBC. The two are not linked,' Kosminsky explained. While having the 'highest respect' for Tim Davie 'as a person', for example, Kosminsky expressed his 'surprise' that 'a man with no journalistic or editorial experience in his past' should have been made the BBC's editor-in-chief. 'If I'd been asked my opinion of the appointment – and I knew Tim well as head of BBC Worldwide – I would have said, 'No, I'm not sure that is quite right.' He's a great bloke, fantastic asset to the organisation, but I don't think he has enough editorial experience. I think the governors got that wrong.' For Kosminsky, the failure of the government to address the impossibility for UK public service broadcasters to compete with the streamers and its recent criticism of the BBC are inextricably linked. 'It seems to be the tentpole of our foreign policy is to butter up the Americans and unfortunately our domestic broadcasting is going to be the casualty,' he said. 'Lisa Nandy has had virtually nothing to say about all the problems that broadcasting is facing in this country… The only time she's popped her head above the parapet is to start calling for sackings at the BBC.' While this 'may get lot of sort of nods from certain quarters' – the US – 'it's extremely dangerous'. Kosminsky believes we have a government 'too susceptible to pressure from outside' and unwilling to stand up for and defend our national institutions. Instead, it is 'prepared to grovel to outside forces for reasons of limited financial and political gain'. And, Kosminsky believes, this attitude comes from the top. 'We have seen the way our Prime Minister behaves around Donald Trump… Actively fanning the ego of this man in the way he has been is really quite an unpleasant thing to observe and it filters down through everything. Anything that might upset Donald Trump and therefore by extension anything that might upset Israel is stamped on. And dear old Lisa Nandy, in my opinion, is part of this government. Keir Starmer is her boss and she's performing her role.' We are in a delicate place. When broadcasters can no longer make programmes that hold truth to power, 'that's just a little bit of our freedom of speech gone', Peter Kosminsky argues. And while future governments might be relieved about that, 'our democracy is the worse for it'. Perhaps a streamers levy is not the answer, but the government does not seem to be coming up with any solutions of its own. If it does not intervene, we will 'end up with a situation where the editorial decisions about everything we watch here in the UK on our television, are made half a world away in California,' Kosminsky warns. 'I regret that.' Hannah's full conversation with Peter Kosminsky is available as a New Statesman podcast. [Further reading: The BBC is afraid] Related
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
I'll take a chainsaw to the bloated State, vows Kemi Badenoch... just like Argentina's strongman president
Kemi Badenoch wants to be Britain's answer to Argentina's chainsaw-wielding, state- slashing president. The Conservative leader described Javier Milei as 'the template' as she praised his honesty with voters and ability to deliver results. In his election campaign in 2023, Mr Milei gained fame for wielding a chainsaw as a symbol of the deep cuts he planned to make to Argentina's state spending. He has since halved the number of government ministries, slashed the public sector workforce by 10 per cent and taken steps to overturn years of fiscal deficits. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mrs Badenoch was asked whether Britain needed someone like Mr Milei and whether she was such a politician. 'Yes and yes,' she replied, adding: 'Milei is the template.' The Argentinian president later retweeted her remarks, and said: 'Fenomeno Barrial', or 'neighbourhood phenomenon'. Mrs Badenoch also used the interview to dismiss chatter about a challenge to her authority as Tory leader. She said: 'I can't spend all my time worrying about regicide. I would lose my mind. I'm so thick-skinned to the point where I don't even notice if people are trying to create harm. That's extremely useful in this job.' She said 'muscle memory plus trial and error' had helped her to grow in the role, but admitted of her party: 'The public are not yet ready to forgive.' She added that she was being 'very, very relentless' in talking about the economy and was 'terrified' by levels of government debt, the sight of the state 'spreading its tentacles everywhere' and crowding out the wealth-creating economy. The Opposition leader also warned voters against following Nigel Farage's Reform UK, saying her party cannot be a 'repository for disenchantment'. Instead, she said Conservatism had to be about 'offering hope, fixing problems'. Her comments come after reports that many Tory MPs who backed Mrs Badenoch in the leadership contest have privately turned on her and believe her core team of advisers are 'lightweights and sycophants'. Faltering Conservatives may seek to trigger a vote of confidence in their leader in November, once a grace period protecting her from such a move ends, the New Statesman suggested. Asked about the idea that Tory MPs were already plotting a coup, Mrs Badenoch said this week: 'I would say that if nobody put their name to it, then I'm not paying any attention to it.' She
