- Bagehot: The nightmare scenario
IN “The Night Face Up”—a 1956 short story by Julio Cortázar, an Argentine master of magical realism—a young man lies in a hospital at night, one injured arm held aloft by weights and pulleys. He is tormented by a recurring nightmare in which he is being hunted by Aztec warriors. The dreams are vivid, from the cling and reek of the jungle swamp in which he is captured to the chill of a dungeon floor and the hands dragging him up stone steps to an altar slick with human blood. The gore is mostly hinted at. The story’s menace turns on the man’s repeated struggles to wake and return to his darkened ward.Across the rich world and above all in western Europe, lots of voters know just how that young patient feels. They yearn to hear that today’s unhappy realities—of austerity and spending cuts, debt, intermittent growth and relative decline—are a nightmare from which they can wake. They long to return to the “normality” of the boom years ended by the credit crunch of 2007. As incumbents wobble or fall across the continent, opposition politicians fall over themselves to agree with voters that today’s miseries are a bad...
- Migrant children: Good things and small packages
WHEN her father died, Claire came on her own from Jamaica, aged 12, to join her older half-sister. She misbehaved and the sister kicked her out. The Home Office revoked her authorisation to stay, telling her to go back to the Caribbean; Claire, then 15, absconded instead. A few years later, pregnant and on the streets, she turned to the network of charities that look after the destitute in Birmingham, especially the Children’s Society. After over a year moving between night shelters and temporary rooms, she now has “discretionary leave” to remain with her children. This entitles her to housing and income support, but she will have to reapply before long.Irregular migrants have long been a neuralgic issue in Britain. Under the previous Labour government a backlog in processing asylum claims increased public unease. Numbers fell when the backlog was slashed and immigration policy toughened, but less dramatic forms of overstaying—by visitors, or the growing number of foreign students—mean the total may still be near 600,000. And asylum-seeker numbers are creeping up again.Undocumented children get little attention,...
- Labour’s reshuffle: Wanted: a red Boris
RESHUFFLES in opposition parties lack the bloody edge of government ones. Yet Ed Miliband’s rejigging of his front bench gives a clue to his preoccupations. Following encouraging results in local elections on May 3rd (the party won over 800 council seats and added 32 councils to its control) Labour’s leader has tried to set a new direction for the party.Out of the main policy-development role has gone the technocratic Liam Byrne, a heroic producer of detailed reviews (29 at the last count). In comes Jon Cruddas, a creature of bright plumage in the opposition’s stolid ranks. Mr Cruddas is the nearest thing Labour has to Boris Johnson, the re-elected mayor of London, in that he presents an eclectic mixture of political ideas, wrapped in outspoken personal charm.As MP for a poor part of east London, Mr Cruddas helped create a movement dubbed “Blue Labour,” which leans on traditions of working-class social conservatism and stresses family and community. That draws Mr Miliband, because Labour shed many working- and lower-middle-class voters during its last spell in office. Between 1997 and 2010 its vote dropped by nine percentage points among the C1 social group and by 21 points among C2s, according to research by Ipsos MORI, a pollster.The new ideas man is certainly bold. He is a Eurosceptic who favours a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. He has upbraided council...
- Scottish universities: Tartan and thistles
Your taxes at work SCOTLAND has a glorious educational tradition: in the 16th century the nation boasted four universities to England’s two. But fairness is also a national trait. One of the first things the Scottish Parliament did after being formed in 1999 was to abolish upfront tuition fees for all Scots studying in the country. As the rest of Britain has moved toward higher fees and a market-based approach to higher education, Scotland has become the land of free. The consequences of this generosity are increasingly apparent.Scotland’s universities are a peculiar mix. A few lure posh English people: until recently, the biggest single supplier of undergraduates to the University of Edinburgh was Eton. Some students at the University of St Andrews (pictured) think nothing of popping to Paris for the weekend. A few miles away, at Dundee College, many locals would not consider leaving the city even in order to study.But the universities’ complexion is gradually changing. The number of students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland—who must now pay Scottish universities annual fees...
- Hairdressing: The architect
HAIRDRESSING, when the young Vidal Sassoon started learning the craft in London in 1945, was a bothersome business for perpetrator and victim alike. The aim was to make women pretty; their comfort was irrelevant. Heat and chemicals conquered the hair, heaping, crimping and teasing it into fluffy but fragile bangs and curls. Hairnets and rollers could preserve the effect only briefly; soon it would be time for another lengthy and costly session. Keeping a chignon (a kind of loose bun) straight meant sleeping on chocks.Mr Sassoon’s approach, by contrast, was hair-raisingly radical. Bouffant styles and bobby pins were a waste of time, he reckoned. Style meant simplicity and flexibility, not complication and rigidity. He likened his work to architecture: fitting the hair to the bone structure, citing the stark geometric forms of the Bauhaus school as his inspiration. Wet or dry, the razor-sharp lines would fall perfectly into place with the client’s jaw and cheekbones. One good cut would last for weeks.Clients were sceptical. Later, he recalled a customer “in a flurry of mink and dripping with jewels” who demanded a...
- The economy: Hard going
A SLUGGISH economy ought at least to enjoy low inflation. Price-cutting should be fierce when jobs are scarce and businesses are fighting for custom. But the consolation of keener prices has eluded Britain. Inflation rose to 3.5% in March and is likely to remain above the 2% target for another year, according to the Bank of England’s latest Inflation Report . The bank’s early success at controlling inflation has not been matched in recent years (see chart). Inflation has been above 2% for most of the past six years and higher than 3% about half that time. Yet this is unlikely to prevent the bank’s monetary-policy committee from sanctioning further “quantitative easing”. The worsening crisis in the euro zone suggests more stimulus will be needed soon, even if persistent inflation suggests otherwise.The committee has blamed high inflation on things beyond its control: the delayed effect of a weaker pound, successive increases in VAT and persistently high global oil and commodity prices. But that still leaves a puzzle as to why economic weakness at home is not doing more to pull inflation down.The...
- Royal portraiture: The queen is dead
I’m tired of you lot WHEN Queen Elizabeth assumed the throne 60 years ago, cloaked in heavy brocade and crusted with jewels, she became the dutiful, fresh-faced figurehead of an imperial power in decline. In the wobbly post-war world, her subjects were greedy for symbols of Britain’s vitality. Cecil Beaton photographed the 27-year-old on the day of her coronation, cooing that she was “cool, smiling, sovereign of the situation”.It is the fate of a monarch—particularly one of diminished powers, heading a downsized empire in an age of increasing media scrutiny—to become a screen onto which others project their views. This is the essence of a show that opened in London’s National Portrait Gallery on May 17th. From reverential paintings of a serious sovereign to Eve Arnold’s candid snapshot of a beaming woman in middle-age, these images mirror the desires, anxieties and resentments of the queen’s many observers. Some artists struggle to perceive the human beneath the royal scrim, while others, such as Gerhard Richter, play on the queen’s inaccessibility. For six decades she has submitted...
- Bagehot: House repairs
SOME years back the BBC enjoyed a surprise hit with a spoof chat-show presented by Mrs Merton, a fictional northern housewife whose trick was skewering guests with mock-naive questions. One noted interview, with a willowy beauty married to a diminutive magician, featured the query: “So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” The concept of the “Mrs Merton question” duly entered the national lexicon.Far from the world of sequins and greasepaint, Bagehot recently interviewed a political grandee about constitutional reforms being explored by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The grandee expressed passionate opposition to a planned change that—it so happened—would disadvantage his own political party. This is a Mrs Merton question, Bagehot ventured—as in: what explains your principled objections to this reform that might cost your party the next election? The grandee pondered this impertinence but did not immediately respond. Yet, a while later, asked to explain his party’s dislike of another constitutional reform, he murmured: “Mrs Merton reasons.”Mrs Merton’s spirit may need summoning...
- Guernsey and Jersey: The ebbing tide
THE Channel Islands have stood ready to defend themselves against invasion for 800 years. Jersey and Guernsey, the two largest, both boast imposing medieval castles in their quaint, yacht-filled harbours. But these days the islands and their 163,000 inhabitants are being assailed from many directions.Remnants of the ancient duchy of Normandy, Guernsey and Jersey are dependencies of the British crown but make their own laws. Growing in parallel with the City of London, they came to specialise in housing the offshore wealth of Europe’s rich (especially Britain’s non-domiciles) attracting fund structures, trusts, banking assets and insurance vehicles through their favourable tax regimes. Finance directly employs about one-fifth of the islands’ workforce. Officially, the industry accounts for 40% of their economic output, although some estimate the figure is closer to 75% once related services are included.The financial crisis has therefore hit them hard. HSBC is to axe jobs, most of them in Jersey, which has a larger banking industry than Guernsey; other banks have already made cuts. Jersey used to be a hub for debt...
- Two years of the coalition: I never promised you a rose garden
TWO years ago Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s set out to prune the state. Defying the long trend in which power was centralised in Westminster, it sought to push it out to cities, towns, schools and doctors. It moved to shake up public services by encouraging firms and non-profit groups to compete for tasks generally done by the state. Schools, local government, policing, health, planning, welfare, justice—almost every arm of the state was to be transformed. All this as the government cut spending more deeply than any since the second world war.The coalition faced a dilemma in its Queen’s Speech on May 9th, which announced the government’s legislative agenda for the coming year. It could embark on a new round of radical reforms, revitalising itself in the process but also stretching its political capital dangerously thin. Or it could announce more modest changes. This would create the time and space to focus on implementing existing reforms but risk losing the sense of mission without which governments tend to be buffeted by events.In the end it veered closer to the second option....
- The labour market: Idle hands
So why is he dancing? BRITAIN was hit harder than most rich countries by the global financial crisis, and its recovery from the crash has been one of the least convincing. Indeed, GDP fell for a second successive quarter at the start of 2012, marking a “double-dip” recession. The wonder is that unemployment is not higher. Among biggish rich countries, only Germany can boast that its jobless rate is lower than before the crisis. But Britain’s is little worse than the average OECD country. The latest figures put unemployment at 8.3%, on a par with America’s perkier economy and well below the rate in some European countries (see first chart).One explanation for this small mercy is that Britain’s economy differed in an important respect from others that ran up big mortgage debts. In America, Ireland and Spain, the collapse of jobs-intensive house-building added to the dole queues. Britain also had a boom in house prices but its rigid planning laws were a curb on construction. Fewer building jobs were created in the boom or lost in the bust.Britain’s jobs market has also proved far more...
- Libel reform: Tourists go home
ABUSE of free speech by the powerful arouses public ire—whether the culprits are newspaper proprietors bullying politicians or thin-skinned tycoons silencing their critics with libel writs. The government moved on one front on May 9th, announcing libel-law reform in the Queen’s Speech. That should make cases in England (Scotland has its own legal system) cheaper, simpler and fairer—at least by the dire standards of current arrangements. If the new law starts in the House of Lords it would reach the Commons in the autumn—just in time to include any legal changes arising from Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into the press.One aim is to curb libel tourism—the practice of foreigners (usually rich ones) suing other foreigners (usually poor news outlets) in English courts. Under the existing law, even a tangential instance of publication—say a Ukrainian website read by only a handful in England—can give rise to a libel suit. Now all claimants must show serious harm to their reputation—and those from outside the European Union will face even tougher tests.American publishers and authors will be glad. They are used to strict First Amendment protection of anything they say about public figures and find it scandalous that they can still risk expensive lawsuits in London if someone they criticise chooses to sue there. Angry American lawmakers have passed retaliatory laws.A second...
- Wonga: Loan ranger
In the money IN LONDON’S jumble of young technology companies with funny names, none stands out quite like Wonga. That is not only because the firm sponsors Blackpool, a football team that may soon return to the Premier League, and Heart of Midlothian, a leading Scottish club. Wonga lends money, online, fast and for short periods. Since 2007 it has made 4m loans worth £1 billion ($1.6 billion) to individuals wanting cash in a hurry—and earned a heap of criticism from campaigners against pricey debt. On May 7th Wonga said that it wanted to lend to small businesses too. It also plans to set up shop abroad.Wonga’s attraction is the ease with which anyone with a computer (or smartphone) can ask it for a bespoke loan. Would-be borrowers choose how much they want and for how long: up to £1,000, or £400 for first-timers, for up to 30 days. Wonga works out the cost in an instant: for example, £47.68 to borrow £300 for a fortnight. It calculates creditworthiness by drawing on all the public data it can muster plus what it has learned from previous loans. If its software says yes, the money lands...
- Border security: Heathrow’s woes
BRITAIN is the land of the orderly queue, at least in theory. But the wait endured by people seeking to clear immigration at Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport for international visitors, topped two-and-a-half hours at one point last week. Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, and others complained that Britain’s image was tarnished. Now immigration officials plan to stage a strike on May 10th. The chaos could overshadow the Olympic games, which begin on July 27th.Ensuring that undesirables are kept out of Britain but that wealthy businessmen and high-spending tourists are welcomed is a tricky balancing act, made harder by sheer numbers. Almost 70m people passed through Heathrow in the past year, 93% of whom were on international flights. Arrangements introduced in 2007 permitted certain checks to be skipped when queues at passport control become dangerously long. But controls were tightened again six months ago, following a row between the home secretary, Theresa May, and Brodie Clark, then head of Britain’s border-control workforce, over the relaxation of immigration controls.What puzzles exhausted passengers arriving at Heathrow, however, is not the stringency of the immigration controls but the incompetence of the operation. Desks are unmanned, or close just as a planeload of people arrives. Fast-track channels are often anything but. Iris scanners—which operate in four of...
- Advertising and the Underground: The bottom line
Fancy your name on one? GIVEN a fair wind, this summer should see a cable car running over the River Thames, connecting Greenwich to the Royal Docks in east London. The “Emirates Air Line”, named after the Dubai carrier, has already altered one familiar feature of the London landscape. For the first time since its creation by Harry Beck, an engineer, in 1931, the London Underground map shows a station that carries the name of a corporate sponsor. Two stations, in fact (see picture).This feels like a minor commercial encroachment. Dubai’s metro system has sponsored stations: a passenger can ride from Nakheel station, named after a property developer, through First Gulf Bank to Emirates station. Many of the stops on Las Vegas’s monorail are named after casinos. But London is not Dubai or Las Vegas. Its two sponsored stations may be renamed as the market dictates: the Emirates deal lasts for ten years.Still, the arrival on the map of sponsored stations fits into a pattern of growing commercialisation on the Tube. In the financial year 2010-11 Transport for London brought in £107m ($166m)...
- Bagehot: Travels with a salesman
BLUSHING lightly, the Vietnamese undergraduate had a question for William Hague. Britain’s foreign secretary was in Hanoi, on the first leg of a tour of South-East Asia between April 24th and 27th, and had just made a pitch for local students to continue their education in Britain.An unabashed salesman, Mr Hague reeled off impressive facts. His Oxford college was founded in 1458. One-quarter of the world’s 20 leading universities are still British. There are 7,000 Vietnamese students in Britain now, and more are eagerly sought. It was then that a student shyly stood and asked: why?Mr Hague offered a disarmingly honest reply. It’s a mixture of friendliness and self-interest, he said: most good things in the world are based on a mixture of those two things. It was quite a British thing to say to a foreigner: candid, self-deprecating and with just a hint of coldness to it, despite being delivered in Mr Hague’s warm, Yorkshire-accented baritone. It was also a helpful summary of the foreign secretary’s vision for British diplomacy.A decade ago Mr Hague was not much known for diplomacy of any sort. Chosen while in his...
- A report on phone-hacking: Dial M for muddle
Elementary, my dear HAD the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee not been so persistent, the extent of phone-hacking at the News of the World might never have come to light. For years the committee—and in particular the Labour MP Tom Watson (pictured)—harried newspaper executives and lawyers. Scraping patiently through layers of obfuscation and denial, the committee worked to get at the truth about misdeeds at the newspaper. On May 1st it finally released a report into the affair—and promptly disgraced itself.The report is damning. It says that Les Hinton, a senior News Corporation executive until last year, misled the committee about the full extent of his knowledge of phone-hacking. It strongly criticises Tom Crone, News International’s legal manager, noting that “any competent newspaper lawyer” would have seen that one 2002 article had been based on voicemails left for Milly Dowler, a murdered girl. Both Mr Crone and Colin Myler, the News of the World ’s former editor, are also found to have misled the committee....
- Foreign exchange: Stirring sterling
THE pound’s standing in the foreign-exchange market has usually been a decent guide to the state of Britain’s economy. So why is sterling stirring now? The pound has risen further against the dollar this year than the other rich-country currencies that are commonly traded beyond their respective borders (see chart). It has also gained around 11% against the euro since July, to €1.23, a level it has rarely topped since 2008.The new-found enthusiasm for sterling seems odd given the economy’s troubles. Figures released last month showed that Britain’s GDP fell for a second successive quarter in the three months to the end of March. An index of manufacturing published on May 1st fell to 50.5 in April, suggesting industry is barely growing (a score below 50 indicates shrinking activity).Yet a currency need only look relatively good to attract buyers. The euro zone is mired in a recession that is likely to prove deeper than Britain’s. Its manufacturing index was a sickly 45.9 in April. The reading for Germany, the euro zone’s mightiest economy, fell to its lowest level for almost three years. German unemployment rose by...
- Custody v community sentences: Smart on crime
IN 1993 Tony Blair, then an untried shadow home secretary, made a dramatic debut on the national political stage with an article titled “Why Crime is a Socialist Issue”. Many voters then saw Labour as soft on crime, too apt to blame it on deprivation and too keen to excuse offenders rather than punish them. Their sympathies lay with the Conservatives—especially the Tory who became home secretary that year, Michael Howard, who asserted: “Prison works”. Unfurling his own slogan, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, Mr Blair for a time neutralised the Tories’ advantage on law and order. New Labour won the next three elections.Almost two decades later it is another Nixon-to-China moment, this time involving Conservative ministers who stress alternatives to custody. It is not only in Britain that criminal-justice reform has become a right-wing issue. The Right on Crime initiative, a creation of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think-tank, counts leading Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush among the fans of its campaign to divert more offenders from prisons to non-custodial sentences. Half of...
- Transport trends: Lonesome highway
DOMESTIC travel has got a lot easier in the past 40 years. Vehicles are faster and more efficient; far more people have driving licences; many households now own two cars. Public transport has improved. Even bicycles are lighter and zippier. The broad perception is that the country’s transport networks are creaking under the strain of so many people. Yet, oddly, people are travelling less. Car and van mileage has fallen over the past four years, mainly because of the economic slump. Yet this comes atop a longer-run trend: for around 15 years, Britons have been making fewer journeys (see first chart). According to the Department for Transport, the average person now goes on only slightly more trips than he did in the early 1970s, mostly by car. Between the mid-1990s and 2010 individuals made 19% fewer shopping outings. Jaunts to see friends dropped by...
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