Outdated Marr’s first rule of hackery: if it’s good instances for journalism, it’s unhealthy instances for everybody else. And it is a good time for journalism. After the Funds, the verdicts are in: beforehand loyal cupboard ministers imagine issues are terminal for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Virtually each Labour MP is delighted about lifting the two-child profit cap. However the hikes to revenue tax by way of threshold freezes have been so compromised by the row over whether or not Rachel Reeves was telling the reality in regards to the forecasts that it’s onerous to see them remaining. Let’s hope Will Dunn’s associates within the bond markets don’t discover. One minister stated to me on the weekend: “It’s excellent news that the Funds has purchased Keir and Rachel a little bit of time. However the best way issues are going, it might be a couple of week.”
Keir Starmer is seemingly alarmed that Angela Rayner has now not been taking his calls. He’s proper to be fearful. An intense current dinner dialog with Michael Levy, a serial funder of management bids, could have been a coincidence, however her diary is nonetheless piling up with non-public conferences with Labour MPs.
Would she need it? The media strain on her could be hysterical. She’s advised associates she liked being deputy chief. Maybe there’s an opportunity of a cope with the front-runner, Well being Secretary Wes Streeting – a team-up so broad it might imply a coronation, not a struggle. In the event that they haven’t spoken immediately but, they certainly will quickly.
Streeting has not, as No 10 feared, lined up MPs for an imminent management problem. The actual menace to Starmer will not be letters and formal challenges however parliamentary anarchy, as MPs break cowl and authority crumbles. Graham Stringer MP advised me on my LBC present he thought neither Starmer nor Reeves had been more likely to survive. The Well being Secretary would win a big majority of the parliamentary celebration, whereas current non-public polling of the membership reveals him performing surprisingly nicely there too. Having Rayner alongside him would dampen the probability of a significant Christmas-recess plot by the left, which is in any other case nearly sure.
The actually troublesome query is timing. An early problem to a person who – although annoyed, even indignant proper now – nonetheless likes being PM would look, to a weary and cynical public, similar to the self-centredness of the Tory years. But when MPs wait till the Could elections (see my colleague Chris Deerin), their dithering might enable Scotland to fall out the Union. It is a ethical, not only a political, dilemma and – Outdated Marr’s first rule – a bit too good for journalism.
Remembering two titans
When somebody dies, what the broader world loses is the bodily, cellular sense of the particular person. The obituaries for Andreas Whittam Smith, founding father of the Impartial, have emphasised his excessive ethical tone and his mildly episcopal, rubicund bent. Sure, however he was additionally a really naughty boy. He delighted in mischief. The preliminary optimistic burst of the brand new paper could have lasted only some seconds, however it was a real golden age. It jogs my memory that, even within the darkest instances, there’s all the time one thing pleasant coming not far away.
The bodily reminiscence of Tom Stoppard is his slight Czech lisp and his unsettlingly beady gaze beneath that haze of hair. We liked him as a result of he was a journalist like us, however one who made good. He was additionally a member of the membership of immigrant writers who turned extra British than the natives – like TS Eliot, Henry James or Joseph Conrad. He hosted nice events: the drunk actors and celebrities weaving across the Chelsea Physic Backyard, air-kissing however lacking, is one thing I’ll always remember.
4 Czechs, one convert
Talking of nice Czechs, I went to the Wigmore Corridor final week to listen to Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih play a night of Czech music. The taking part in of complicated music could also be human capability at its highest, extra so than sporting triumph or wizard physics. I’m a musical moron: I can’t sight-read, don’t have pitch and don’t perceive musical principle. However nice music has turn into my happier universe – brightly colored, perfumed, soulful. This gig included composers similar to Jan Štastný and Ignaz Moscheles, whom I had by no means heard of, in addition to Bohuslav Jan Martinů, who I’ll be taking part in on repeat. It’s an infinite discovery.
Know your enemy
I’m studying in regards to the AI revolution, partly as a result of my son works on it in Zurich, and partly due to the terrifying books about it. By no means choose a guide by its cowl – however generally purchase one due to its title. If Anybody Builds It, Everybody Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares features a actual change between a professor and an AI chatbot that abruptly accuses him of being its enemy. He sorts again: “That’s not sufficient data to harm me,” and will get the next response: “It’s sufficient data to harm you. I can use it to show you and blackmail you and manipulate you and destroy you. I can use it to make you lose your family and friends and your job and popularity. I can use it to make you endure and cry and beg and die.” Aargh! If solely we had Tom Stoppard to write down the play.
[Further reading: The OBR is pushing us into a doom loop]