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July 16, 2017 · Issue no 10,062 · thesundaytimes.co.uk
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Schools chief CORNISH CREAM AT WIMBLEDON warns about impact of new GCSEs
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Sian Griffiths Education Editor Schools facing tougher GCSE exams, taken for the first time this summer by about 700,000 pupils, are threatening children’s chances of getting a “broad and balanced education”, the chief inspector of schools warns today. Amanda Spielman said she was concerned that schools were drilling pupils too narrowly for GCSEs and were already extending courses from two years to three years to try to ensure good results. Spielman said this meant subjects such as art, music, sport, humanities and drama were being squeezed as children were forced to decide which subjects to study or drop aged just 13. In one school she visited she was horrified — and said parents would be “surprised” — to see a class of 11-year-olds taken through GCSE mark schemes instead of being taught geography. “The real substance of education is getting lost in our schools,” she told The Sunday Times. In her first significant report at Ofsted she has ordered inspectors to review what is being taught in lessons. Experts have long warned that the UK has some of the most tested and stressed children in the developed world, yet ministers have pushed through exam reforms in an effort to raise standards. This summer 16-year-olds in England have been guinea pigs for the tougher maths and English GCSEs, which will be graded on a 9-1 scale, replacing the previous A* to G grading system. Far fewer children are expected to score the top grade of nine than achieved an A* in the past, and more than half are not expected to reach new national benchmarks. Already, according to one poll last week, 10% fewer pupils in half the maths departments surveyed have signed up for A-level maths next year after sitting the new Continued on page 2 →
PM slaps down Hammond in austerity row Tim Shipman and Caroline Wheeler
Television viewers may be shocked by the salaries paid to popular presenters when the BBC discloses its leading earners on Wednesday — but perhaps not as shocked as the stars who discover they are not doing as well as they thought. “Some of the biggest egos in the land are there and they will discover what the other big egos are paid,” said Peter Sissons, the former News at Ten presenter, who warned that things might get ugly
Philip Hammond has declared that public-sector workers are “overpaid”, as a bitter cabinet war erupted over austerity. At a heated cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the chancellor refused to lift the 1% cap on wages for publicsector workers on the grounds that they earn more than those in the private sector, along with generous taxpayer-funded pensions. But Hammond left his colleagues thunderstruck at the language he used. “Public-sector workers are overpaid when you take into account pensions,” he declared. The chancellor also described train drivers as “ludicrously overpaid”. The comments will fuel public anger that the Tories are out of touch with the public mood and will plunge Tory MPs into despair at the chancellor’s political tin ear. More than 5m public-sector workers have seen their incomes fall in real terms over the last seven years and a majority of ministers blame the freeze for the Tories’ poor performance at the general election. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Steve White, the chairman of the Police Federation, warns today that failure to give officers a proper pay rise will lead to a recruitment crisis that would compromise public safety. Last night the Treasury confirmed the chancellor told his colleagues that public-sector workers enjoyed a “10% premium” in income over private-sector workers because of their pensions but
Eleanor Tomlinson and Aidan Turner, stars of the BBC series Poldark, at Wimbledon yesterday to see Garbine Muguruza beat Venus Williams in the women’s final Reports, Sport
And finally ... here’s what I earn Nicholas Hellen Social Affairs Editor
Chancellor says public sector is ‘overpaid’
between the corporation and any miffed millionaires. The day of reckoning for television talent follows Theresa May’s new rules requiring the BBC to identify staff earning more than £150,000 a year — close to the prime minister’s salary. Huw Edwards, the News at Ten lead presenter, will learn how much more (or less) he is paid than his understudy, Fiona Bruce, who also hosts the Antiques Roadshow. No one will be surprised if John Humphrys, who once said his Mastermind quizmaster’s fee was
“money for old rope”, is near the top of the magic money tree. But how many branches further down are his co-presenters on Radio 4’s Today programme, Mishal Husain and Sarah Montague? Earnings will be declared in £50,000 bands with Graham Norton, the chat show host and Eurovision Song Contest presenter, expected to top the list around the £2.5m mark. The BBC will announce that about 100 top earners were paid a total of £29m last year. A few on more than £500,000 earned a combined £7.3m.
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CABINET AT WAR, PAGE 13 denied he had used the word “overpaid”. However, five separate sources say Hammond did use the word and revealed that the prime minister and foreign secretary reprimanded him for doing so. A cabinet source said: “Philip used a fairly inflammatory phrase. He said they were ‘overpaid’. That caused some general astonishment. His overall tone was that we shouldn’t give them more cash because they are overpaid. Later in the meeting both Boris Johnson and the PM said we should not say public-sector workers are overpaid.” Justine Greening, the education secretary, also used Tuesday’s cabinet meeting to press for more public spending on health and education, backed up by Karen Bradley,
the culture secretary, and James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland secretary. But Hammond won support from Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, who said it was important to maintain fiscal discipline. Official figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics show that until 2003 private-sector workers earned more than those in the public sector. Since then, public-sector workers have opened up a big lead. By 2016 the pay gap stood at £22.30 a week. The row is likely to damage Hammond’s chances of becoming prime minister if Theresa May stands down. It comes after it emerged that the chancellor made sexist comments in the meeting about female train drivers. The Treasury’s opposition to public-sector pay rises was confirmed by Steve White, who met Amber Rudd, the home secretary, on Tuesday. “She told me the Treasury view is that the police have had a very good deal already,” he said. The Police Federation has asked for a 2.8% rise and is awaiting the decision of the Police Remuneration Review Body, which could come this week. White claimed failure to drop the pay freeze would lead to further shortages of officers and leave Britain vulnerable to more terrorist attacks. He said: “This year we have seen troops on the streets because we didn’t have enough cops. We will soon have members of the public picking up the phone desperate for help from the police service and Continued on page 2 →
‘Life sentence’ for acid attackers Caroline Wheeler and Robin Henry The home secretary today warns acid attackers they face life behind bars, saying their victims must not be the only ones who serve “life sentences” with their injuries. In an article for The Sunday Times, Amber Rudd says those who carry out such attacks will “feel the full force of the law” as she sets out a strategy aimed at ending a spate of horrifying incidents. Acid was used in five assaults on delivery workers in
London in the space of 72 minutes on Thursday night. “We will seek to ensure that everyone working within the criminal justice system, from police officers to prosecutors, have the powers they need to severely punish those who commit these appalling crimes,” she adds. The Home Office will consider tougher sentences for the culprits as part of a review that will also look at restricting the sale and possession of corrosive substances. Amber Rudd, page 4
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Davis allies accused of smearing PM’s husband Tim Shipman Political Editor Allies of David Davis were accused of smearing Theresa May’s husband last night as they claimed that Philip May was urging the prime minister to resign. A close friend of the Brexit secretary said that “those who love” May want her to take the initiative and stand down. May and her husband are travelling to Switzerland next week for a walking holiday in the country where Margaret Thatcher used to relax. Friends of Davis are openly speculating that she could use the trip to decide to walk away from Downing Street. She used a hiking holiday in Wales at Easter to reverse her opposition to a general election. “She’s completely shot,” one Davis ally said. “ I know there are people talking to her about how it would be better for her to take the initiative rather than to be done in. “She looks so wounded that it isn’t her enemies that are saying that, it is people who love her.” The MP added that Philip May would
Cracking grades, but poor life skills → Continued from page 1 GCSE. Schools are also being encouraged to enter most pupils for more academic subjects and are being measured on the results. In the face of the exam pressures, schools were finding it “hard to make sure they put children’s interests first and think children, children, children”, said Spielman, who worked in the City before helping establish the chain of Ark academy schools. She praised a handful of head teachers who had
be “incredibly important in persuading her. He’s a politician himself. He was president of the Oxford Union so he knows the game.” May’s friends reacted with fury to the claims, accusing Team Davis of running a smear campaign to destabilise her. A senior cabinet minister said: “It’s black ops and completely untrue.” Downing Street sources admit that May has endured huge psychological strain as a result of the botched election campaign. Her new chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, has told colleagues that the prime minister “has been in a very bad place” over the past month while expressing the belief that she is “now much better”. A second close associate of Davis last week approached a cabinet minister in a House of Commons bar, urging him to oust May, declaring that she needed to be gone “within two weeks” for the good of the country and the party. If the prime minister stood down of her own accord, the plotters say that they would stage an election to narrow the field of candidates to two when
started drawing up lists of 100 great books children should read, poems to learn by heart and pieces of music they should listen to as a counterpoint to narrow exam study. “I think it’s a great idea. It is a really encouraging sign that schools are thinking about the whole experience that all their children should have at school, and what the children should come away with,” she said. The “teaching to the test” mentality had spread even to primary schools, she added, where eight and nine-yearolds face two or three years of mock papers to prepare them for national tests they would not take until the age of 11. Children drilled for exams might get “cracking grades” but that did not mean they were properly prepared for university or the workplace, she said, and it could even damage their life chances. “That is not something any of us should be happy with.”
parliament returned in September. The first Davis ally said: “She’s virtually certain to be gone during 2017 unless something very bizarre happens. The parliamentary party can vote for the two finalists before the party conference and the two finalists can strut their stuff at the conference and you can have a vote quite quickly after that between the two of them in the country.” Details of the plotting came a week after it emerged that Andrew Mitchell, the former cabinet minister who ran Davis’s 2005 leadership campaign, had called at a private dinner for May to go. At a second dinner Mitchell warned that “for the Conservative Party, Europe has become akin to an ancient biblical curse”, which those present interpreted as a coded claim that only the Brexit secretary could sort out the mess. A third friend of Davis said Mitchell had not been reprimanded for speaking out. “I don’t think [Davis] is in the slightest bit annoyed,” the friend said. “There’s a widespread belief that [May’s] position is unsustainable. Her authority is shattered.”
TUC reveals ‘£3,000 pay cuts’ → Continued from page 1 we simply won’t be able to respond.” White said officers had experienced a real-terms pay cut of 15% over five years, which would increase to 23% if the pay freeze remained in place until 2020. “Police officers do not become cops in order to make a huge amount of money; they do it out of a sense of duty,” he said. “Officers are applying to Police Federation and police force welfare funds to pay for petrol for their car and for
food vouchers for their family . . . the government needs to do something about it.” Ministers will come under fresh pressure to lift the pay cap tomorrow when the TUC stages a protest in Westminster. Today the TUC releases figures showing the real-terms wages of prison officers, paramedics and NHS dieticians are down more than £3,800 a year compared with seven years ago. Firefighters are down nearly £2,900 and teachers £2,500. Train drivers on Southern rail voted last week to strike over pay, despite being offered a 23.8% rise over four years to £60,683 for a fourday week. A Treasury spokesman said: “We have chosen to restrain pay to keep more public-sector jobs.” He added: “The chancellor was describing to cabinet the 10% public-sector pay premium. He didn’t say public-sector workers were overpaid.” Editorial, page 18
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS Lord or Lady? BBC to reveal who’s Who Elizabeth Beynon Move over Time Lords: the first female Doctor might be about to step out of the Tardis. Jodie Whittaker, who found fame in the Bafta-winning ITV drama Broadchurch, yesterday emerged as the joint favourite to land the lead role in Doctor Who. The identity of the actor to replace Peter Capaldi as the 13th Doctor will be announced on BBC1 this afternoon after the men’s singles final at Wimbledon. Whittaker, 35, was not even among the top 20 actors Jodie Whittaker
6-4 Cocktails in Las Vegas and chewing gum are among the items Chris Howard claimed on expenses while selling bullion
Royal Mint’s bullion chief is man with the golden gum The £45,000 expenses bill of a key executive lists cocktails and hotels — but also hits the taxpayer for a 50p pack of Wrigley’s Jonathan Corke and James Gillespie It must have been a tough day for Chris Howard. At 11.31am on April 8 last year, he ordered a $14 Bloody Mary while on a business trip to Las Vegas. Just 41 minutes later, he ordered a Slightly Hung Over cocktail for $15. It may have been a stressful time — or jet lag — that sent Howard to the bars so early, but it is also a glimpse into the extraordinary lifestyle of the man who is director of bullion at the governmentowned Royal Mint. A freedom of information inquiry has lifted the lid on his expenses and revealed that, despite earning £123,000 last year, he still charged a 45p packet of tissues to the taxpayer. Indeed, he clocked up £45,000 on his expenses in a year — even deciding that a packet of chewing gum was too much of a cost to bear himself. Answers from the inquiry also show he
spent £15,000 last year staying in some of the world’s most luxurious hotels and £8,700 on entertaining business contacts and staff. It was not all cocktails in Las Vegas, though. Howard, 57, a former Ampleforth pupil who lives in Fulham, west London, also billed for items such as a 50p pack of Wrigley’s Extra chewing gum and £1.50 on mineral water bought at Boots at Euston station, London. For a man who works for the company that makes the 12-sided £1 coins, launched in March, he knows how to be frugal. Rather than endless fine dining, Howard is an enthusiastic fan of fast food. In Jackson, Ohio, Howard spent $6.70 on a Filet-O-Fish and Big Mac with medium fries. The next day he treated himself to a KFC Big Box (chicken, coleslaw, potato wedges, a biscuit and a Pepsi) for $8.06. Howard is certainly following in some historic footsteps — although previHoward: earned £123,000 last year
ously the steps of Mint employees may not have taken them quite so far. His hotel bills demonstrate some impressive globetrotting, from California to Melbourne, Singapore to Shanghai, Hong Kong to Beijing. The Royal Mint traces its history back to the “moneyers” in London, more than 1,000 years ago. By the early 1700s, the Mint produced coins from its premises behind the walls of the Tower of London before moving to a grand building in Tower Hill. Even then, the international approach of Howard would have been welcomed: the Mint opened branches in Commonwealth countries and struck silver half-roubles for the Soviet Union in 1924. Now based in Llantrisant, near Pontyclun in Wales, it has earned the Welsh town the rather unkind sobriquet of “the hole with the Mint in it”. The Mint is a limited company but is
wholly owned by the Treasury and supplies all the nation’s coins. It can produce almost 5bn coins a year and is the world’s leading export mint, making coins and medals for about 60 countries every year — 70% of total sales. Royal Mint said: “Chris Howard’s commercial activities . . . necessitate frequent meetings with customers and distribution partners across the world, in order to grow sales.” Since Howard was given the job of expanding the division, the Royal Mint’s bullion activities have grown significantly, it added. Profits at Royal Mint’s bullion unit have risen from £1.5m in 2014 to £4.6m to the end of the financial year in March. On the matter of claiming for apparently trivial items such as tissues and chewing gum, Royal Mint said its travel policy allowed £5 a day for expenses incurred, and £10 if staying abroad. Howard has the option of claiming those fixed amounts, but “instead claims actual expenditure, which is lower”. The Royal Mint says on its website that Howard has lived in five countries and speaks three languages. He is, the Mint boasts, “truly international”. Well, his expenses certainly prove that. @jrgillespie2000 Editorial, page 18
DOCKETS ALL OVER THE WORLD KFC Big Box io $8.06, Jackson, Ohio Wrigley’s Extra gum 50p, Boots at Euston, London Evian mineral water £1.50, Boots at Euston, London Bloody Mary $14, Lobby Bar, Aria resort and casino, Las Vegas Packet of tissues 45p, Boots at Euston, London Slightly Hung Over cocktail $15, Lift Bar, Aria resort and casino, Las Vegas Filet-O-Fish and Big Mac with medium fries $6.70, Jackson, Ohio
tipped for the coveted role a week ago. But by last night Ladbrokes Coral had dramatically revised her odds and she was neck and neck with the BBC’s Death In Paradise actor Kris Marshall, 44, at 6-4. Whittaker is not the only woman in the running. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 32, star of the BBC comedy Fleabag, is also a contender with odds of 6-1, while, Olivia Colman, 43, who also starred in Broadchurch, is 25-1. The Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, 56, is 20-1. Fans of Doctor Who may have picked up on a series of clues that the Time Lord is Kris Marshall
6-4 about to change sex after he told his latest assistant Bill: “We’re billions of years beyond your petty obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes.” Whittaker’s credits include the 2011 British science fiction film Attack the Block, in which she starred with John Boyega, who went on to take the lead role in Star Wars: Episode VII. She also appeared in the BBC adaptation in 2008 of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Capaldi, who became the Doctor after Matt Smith stepped aside in 2013, will make his last appearance on Christmas Day.
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS
Police to target acid carriers as assaults soar Stop and search will be intensified and the law reviewed, as victim and TV presenter Katie Piper calls for longer sentences Caroline Wheeler and Robin Henry Police are to use stop-and-search powers to target people who carry acid in a crackdown on the possession of corrosive substances. The move is part of a government strategy to confront the epidemic of acid attacks, including a rampage in which five people had a corrosive substance thrown in their faces on Thursday night. The Home Office will work with police chiefs to issue new guidance to officers. An investigation by The Sunday Times this year found that children as young as 12 are carrying acid concealed in sports drinks bottles and taking it to school. In the latest wave of assaults, “gig economy” workers delivering takeaways in north and east London were targeted by two moped riders, leaving one with life-changing injuries. Acid was used in five attacks in the space of 72 minutes. One victim, Jabed Hussain, 32, an UberEats driver, said his “face felt like it was on fire” after being sprayed by the attackers, who then stole his scooter. Last night, a 16-year-old youth was charged with a series of offences in connection with the attacks, including robbery and grievous bodily harm. A second suspect, a boy of 15, was freed on bail. Police were last night investigating a sixth possible acid attack in east London. A man in his twenties was squirted with a “noxious substance” by two people on a moped in Dagenham on Friday evening. As part of the government review, tougher sentences for those found guilty of acid attacks will be considered. The Home Office will work with the police and the Ministry of Justice to assess whether the powers available to the courts are sufficient to deal with the most serious cases.
ACID ATTACK
BRITAIN
Existing sentencing guidelines for grievous bodily harm, which carries a maximum life sentence, tell judges that an “ongoing effect upon the victim” and “gratuitous degradation of the victim” make the crime more serious. But there is no special offence or sentencing guidance for acid. Crown Prosecution Service guidance to prosecutors will also be reviewed to ensure it makes clear that acid and other corrosive substances can be classed as dangerous weapons. In addition, the Poisons Act 1972 will be reviewed to
BIRTHDAY HORROR
Resham Khan: acid thrown at her in London as she celebrated her 21st
assess whether it should cover more acids and harmful substances. Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Kearton of the National Police Chiefs’ Council said: “Police have dealt with a number of high-profile cases in recent months, and we continue to collect data from police forces across England and Wales to understand the scale and extent of these attacks and develop our ability to support and protect victims. “While it is virtually impossible to ban the sale of all corrosive substances, we are working closely with the Home Office and retailers to determine how we can keep these products from people who intend to cause harm. I would urge anyone who is a victim of this type of attack to report it so that we can deal with the matter positively and sensitively.” Stephen Timms, a Labour MP who will lead a debate on acid attacks in the Commons tomorrow, has called for tougher sentences for those found guilty, while attack survivor Katie Piper said victims faced a “life sentence” as she called for tougher sentencing as a deterrent. The TV presenter, author and charity campaigner has undergone more than 250 operations after a former boyfriend arranged the assault nine years ago. In an open letter published in the Scars, Burns & Healing medical journal on Friday, she revealed: “I couldn’t recognise myself when I woke up from a coma, and I wanted to commit suicide.” She added: “I will continue to need operations and therapy for life. For acid attack survivors, the aftermath is a life sentence.” The parliamentary debate follows an attack last month on Resham Khan, an aspiring model celebrating her 21st birthday, and her cousin Jameel Muhktar, when acid was thrown through their car window. John Tomlin appeared in court last week charged with two counts of grievous bodily harm with intent. Corrosive substance attacks rose from 183 in 2012-13 to 504 in 2016-17 across Britain, according to data from 37 police forces. In London there were 458 cases last year of acid being used in crime, compared with 261 the previous year. @robin_henry
Attackers must share victims’ life sentences AMBER RUDD HOME SECRETARY I know I am not alone in feeling truly horrified by the five acid attacks that took place in less than 90 minutes in London on Thursday night. As the police investigation continues, it would be wrong to speculate on the details or motivations. What we do know is that five people have been injured, and for one of those victims we are told the injuries will be life-changing. My thoughts are with them. We have seen a worrying increase in reports of attacks with acid or similar substances as offensive weapons. Only last month two cousins — Resham Khan and Jameel Mukhtar — were attacked by a man throwing acid through their car window in Beckton, east London, on Resham’s 21st birthday. In April clubbers in east London were caught up in an attack involving acid that left 20 injured. Each story is different, yet each one is equally abhorrent. We have seen acid used in cases of gang violence, drug trafficking, domestic abuse and so-called
honour-based violence. There is something particularly troubling about these kinds of attacks. Our faces tell our stories. To burn and to disfigure is the most grotesque and vicious act of identity destruction. This is a crime that changes how people look and feel, sometimes for the rest of their lives. All too frequently the victims’ lives are altered for ever. Nobody should have to go through this kind of mental and physical trauma. We have heard from victims and survivors who say the injuries have so deeply affected their sense of self that the challenge of returning to a normal life has appeared insurmountable. As home secretary I am acutely aware of this growing problem and I refuse to let those behind such attacks spread fear throughout our society. The law in this area is already strong, with acid attackers facing up to a life sentence in certain cases. But we can and will improve our response. That’s why today I am announcing an action plan to tackle acid attacks. It will include a wide-ranging review of the law enforcement and criminal justice response, of existing legislation, of access to harmful products and of the support offered to victims. The Crown Prosecution Service’s guidance to prosecutors will be reviewed so that acid and other corrosive
substances can be classed as dangerous weapons. In addition, we will look again at the Poisons Act to assess whether it should cover more of these harmful substances. We will also make sure that those who commit these terrible crimes feel the full force of the law. We will seek to ensure that everyone working within the criminal justice system, from police officers to prosecutors, has the powers they need to punish severely those who commit these appalling crimes. I am clear that life sentences must not be reserved for acid attack survivors. Further work will take place with retailers to agree measures to restrict the sales of acid and other corrosive substances. And we need to make sure victims are given the care and support they need, from the initial medical response to giving evidence in court and throughout the recovery process — however long and difficult that may be. As the Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, has rightly pointed out, acid attacks are still relatively rare. All the same, the increase in reports of these barbaric crimes is a cause for concern. Be assured: this government, working with law enforcement and others, will take action. Editorial, page 18
NEWS IN BRIEF
JILLIAN EDELSTEIN
‘LEGAL HIGH’ KILLS GIRL, 15 A 15-year-old girl has died after taking a suspected “legal high” drug. She was found unconscious in a park in Newton Abbot, Devon, early yesterday and taken to hospital in Torbay. Two other teenage girls were taken to hospital as a precaution. Police urged parents to have an “open and honest” talk with their children about the dangers of taking drugs.
ANTI-SEMITISM AT RECORD HIGH
Anti-semitic hate crime has hit its worst level on record. Data obtained by Campaign Against Antisemitism show a 44% rise in two years, with 1,078 crimes targeting Jews last year by the country’s 49 police forces. Amber Rudd, the home secretary, vowed to “use the full force of the law to protect every person in the UK”.
VOGUE APOLOGY TO ZAYN AND GIGI
Sam Roddick with mother Anita, who died in 2007 of complications from hepatitis C
Daughter says transfusion ‘roulette’ killed Roddick Caroline Wheeler Deputy Political Editor Dame Anita Roddick’s daughter has broken her silence about her mother’s death as a result of a contaminated blood transfusion she received while giving birth. Speaking just days after Theresa May ordered an inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal, Sam Roddick, 46, said the tragedy of her mother’s illness was that she had not been diagnosed with hepatitis C until it was too late to treat the virus. Sam, who founded the lingerie brand Coco de Mer, said: “How can you think that something as innocent as a woman going into hospital to give birth can lead to someone coming out with hepatitis C? “My mum was one of tens of thousands of people who were basically on a Russian roulette. I was in my late thirties when she was diagnosed and she was in her sixties, and I knew it was to do with my birth. It was quite a tender subject for my mum, and I didn’t really dissect how she found out, but I know it really rested very heavily on her heart.” At least 2,400 people in Britain, including many haemophiliacs, died from hepatitis C and Aids-related illnesses after receiving imported blood products, via
Sam and Anita on the beach the NHS, riddled with the viruses in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of the plasma used to make the clotting agent factor VIII, which most haemophiliacs lack, came from donors such as prisoners in America who had sold their blood. Anita Roddick, who founded the Body Shop, contracted hepatitis C in 1971 when she was given the transfusion, but was not aware of the illness for more than 30 years. When she was eventually diagnosed, she was suffering from cirrhosis. She died in 2007 aged 64 of a
NEWS REVIEW
A BLOOD SCANDAL UNFOLDS THIS SECTION, PAGES 22-23
brain haemorrhage, a rare complication of the disease. It was a tragic end to a remarkable life for one of Britain’s most successful and colourful entrepreneurs. However, her case is not unique and people are still being diagnosed with hepatitis C as a result of transfusions of contaminated blood decades ago. The prime minister announced the inquiry on Tuesday after The Sunday Times revealed that six party leaders had written a letter demanding she take action. Sam Roddick, who describes herself as a “huge fan of the NHS”, hopes the inquiry will not only provide answers to the families who have lost loved ones, but also encourage those who may have been exposed to tainted blood to get tested for the disease. “The tragedy around my mum was she didn’t get diagnosed until she had cirrhosis,” Sam said. “If she had known she had hepatitis C a lot younger, she would have been able to have treatment.” Labour MP Diana Johnson, a long-time campaigner for those affected, is to meet James Jones, the retired Church of England bishop who chaired the Hillsborough independent panel, in September to seek advice about the parameters of the blood products inquiry. @cazjwheeler
Vogue has apologised to Zayn Malik, the former One Direction star,and his girlfriend, Gigi Hadid, after saying they were “embracing gender fluidity”. The American magazine admitting “missing the mark” after suggesting the heterosexual couple were gender fluid because they sometimes borrow each other’s clothes.
PILOT KILLED IN ALPS CRASH A British pilot reported missing in the French Alps was found dead yesterday in the debris of his crashed glider. The 69-year-old, whose name was not released, is believed to have smashed into a mountain summit near the commune of Val-desPrés, north of Briançon, on Friday.
DUGDALE DATES SCOTTISH RIVAL The Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has revealed that she is in a relationship with an SNP MSP. The 35-year-old has been dating the Mid Fife and Glenrothes MSP Jenny Gilruth, 32, for about four months. The pair became close during a cross-party trip to America.
Gilruth, left, and Dugdale
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‘Stalking risk’ for children using Snapchat tracker Parents are being warned a new social media feature that pinpoints a user’s location could be exploited by strangers
ALL ABOUT SNAP MAP AND HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
Mary O’Connor Young people are putting themselves at risk of being stalked and bullied if they use a new social media application that could allow strangers to discover their exact location. Snapchat, the photo and videosharing app that has more than 10m UK users, launched its Snap Map feature last month. It tracks the phone’s GPS information to plot users’ exact, real-time location on a map. The feature was criticised by Vicki Shotbolt, chief executive of Parent Zone, which helps parents understand the digital world, as a “threat to children’s security”. Shotbolt, who also acts as a government adviser on children’s use of the internet, said: “[Snap Map] feeds directly into that fear of missing out [Fomo] issue. For a young person who is feeling vulnerable already, or may be excluded from their friend group . . . it’s inevitably going to make them feel bad. “We very rarely say this, but in this instance we are saying, ‘This feature is adding nothing to your life and it’s a threat to your security, so turn it off.’” On Snap Map a child is represented by an animated character of their choosing, called a Bitmoji. The child can select whether they want the character to be visible to all their Snapchat friends, visible to certain friends only or hidden. The last, known as Ghost mode, is the default setting. Last week Nadia Sawalha, 52, a panellist on the television programme Loose Women, slammed Snap Map as “dangerous” and warned that children, including her 14-year-old daughter Maddie, were “growing up without any sense of what privacy means”. The actress voiced her concerns that children were being put at risk by allow-
How to open it
How it works
How to stay hidden
Snap Map screen will open within Snapchat when you pinch your fingers together on the screen
It includes settings that can reveal your location to ‘friends’
The default setting is Ghost mode, which prevents your location being shared. If you do not want to be seen, make sure you do not switch it off
It tracks the phone’s GPS information to plot the user’s real-time position
Users are represented as animated Bitmoji characters
Nadia Sawalha with her 14-year-old daughter, Maddie
WE’RE WATCHING YOU AND WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE
A Snapchat function called Our Story, which used to show collections of videos and photos linked to a place, is now combined with Snap Map to show exactly where and when the clips were taken. They disappear after 24 hours or can be removed sooner. Police were able to pinpoint where videos of an 18-month-old toddler, a two-year-old girl and teenagers drinking alcohol at parties had been made. They set up a dummy account to watch the clips. Detective Constable Ian Turnbull, from Cleveland police, urged parents and children using Snap Map to protect themselves with Ghost mode, which hides their location. He said: “This becomes a problem with, predominantly, children, who might accept any [Snapchat] friend request.”
ing their exact location to be shared with a large list of Snapchat friends. In many cases these could include strangers or online acquaintances they have never met in real life. “My daughter has 80 friends on Snapchat. I’ve literally met five or 10 of those,” she said. “To me a friend is someone who has come round to our house, and I know and have spoken to one of their parents. Another of her friends has 1,000.” Sawalha and her daughter, who is home-schooled, are also worried about the potential for bullying and peer pressure. “I’m sure [Snapchat] will say it’s been tested, but to actually be in the head of a 14-year-old girl who knows that all her friends are at a party and that she’s not, that’s quite different. “Maddie also said sometimes she tells her friends she doesn’t want to go out because she’s busy, but she’s now worried they will be able to know she’s doing nothing [if her location is enabled].”
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Minimum age to open a Snapchat account
Dame Esther Rantzen, founder of Childline, the helpline for children, said there were “dangers” for young people “who might think someone is a friend when they are not”. Rachael Dyer, family support coordinator at Leighton Academy school in Crewe, said she was worried very young children could be at risk, although in theory users of Snapchat must be aged 13 or over. “If the children weren’t as tech-savvy as we’ve made them, who knows what could have happened? I am worried very young children could be using the service,” she said. Snapchat said the safety of all its users was “very important”, adding: “We routinely work with law enforcement and safety experts and will continue to do so — and encourage a public conversation about ways to use the Map safely, as intended.” @marycoconnor
Google accused of pushing unusable Sheeran tickets Jon Ungoed-Thomas Google has been accused of “aiding and abetting” ticket rip-offs by promoting the sale of invalid tickets for Ed Sheeran’s forthcoming tour for up to £1,060 each. The top result under a Google search for Ed Sheeran concert tickets is an advertisement from resale agent Viagogo. The tickets are invalid because their resale is prohibited on unauthorised sites. Viagogo is already under scrutiny after clients found they had paid as much as £1,500 more for tickets than they had expected. Stuart Galbraith, chief executive of Kilimanjaro Live, one of Ed Sheeran’s tour promoters, said: “Google is aiding and abetting Viagogo duping people. It is massively frustrating.” He said tickets were being sold in breach of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 because they were invalid and the terms and conditions of the tickets were not made clear on the Viagogo site. Other resale agents such as StubHub, Seatwave and GetMeIn! are not offering Ed Sheeran tickets for resale because the terms state they “immediately become invalid” if offered or sold on an unauthorised site. Kerry West, 49, from Herne Bay, Kent, thought she was buying four tickets from the official vendor at £88 each for the concert at Wembley stadium next June, a total cost of £352. She used her credit card to pay Viagogo and the transaction completed Sheeran: tickets invalid
with a total price of £1,889.23 — comprised of ticket cost of £1,401.48, a buyer fee of £399, a shipping fee of £5.95, VAT of £79.80 and an unaccounted charge of £3. West, who thought she was buying the tickets at face value, said: “I burst into tears. I turned to my husband and said: ‘I’ve been scammed’. ” West says it is clear she has been overcharged for the tickets and they are invalid, but Viagogo refuses to cancel the transaction. Its advice to customers is: “If you can’t attend the event, you can always resell your tickets.” Claire Turnham, who is campaigning for customer refunds from Viagogo, thought she was buying four tickets for £263 in January for an Ed Sheeran concert from the official site. She was charged £1,421 and fought successfully for a refund. “This is causing a lot of distress,” she said. “I don’t understand why Google allows these advertisements. The tickets being sold are clearly not valid.” One of the Sheeran tickets on sale on Viagogo last week was for a concert at Wembley next June, including a meal package, box seat and unrestricted view, priced at £1,060.15. It is understood Google does not consider Viagogo breaches its policy. A spokesman said: “We have a set of strict policies which govern what ads we do and do not allow on. When we discover ads that break our policies we quickly take action.” Viagogo did not respond to a request for comment. @JonUngoedThomas
ST DIGITAL Watch Rod Liddle on the trail of Viagogo at thesundaytimes.co.uk
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It’s an utter disaster, darling. Brexit is deterring au pairs The number of young Europeans applying to help with childcare in Britain has fallen by up to half since the EU vote
CHRIS BOURCHIER
Anxious remainers tell Harley Street all about it
Jonathan Leake and Samuel Juniper It is the price that no middle-class family in Britain expected to pay. The endless supply of enthusiastic (or sometimes rather grumpy) au pairs from Europe to the UK’s family homes is drying up, one of the unexpected casualties of Brexit Britain. Each year, an estimated 40,000 families offer young foreigners a home, food and pocket money. In return, they get the childcare that allows parents to work, often also forming friendships that last years. Figures collected by agencies that match au pairs with families show the numbers of Europeans willing to work in UK homes has fallen 40%-50% since 2015. “Brexit has really damaged us,” said Rebecca Haworth-Wood, chairwoman of the British Au Pair Agencies Association (BAPAA). “Many families rely on au pairs but this year our agencies are struggling to find them. Europeans are just less willing to come because Britain is perceived to be anti-foreigner. They want to go to families in places like Ireland instead.” Haworth-Wood surveyed 20 agencies belonging to the association. They had 1,100 families for whom they were struggling to find au pairs when it would normally be relatively easy. She said: “About 90% of au pairs are young women. Those considering coming this year have been put off — often it is their parents who are most worried.” Madeleine Nilsson, 25, from Sweden, was in the UK during the referendum and said the negative comments made about foreigners during and after the campaign were disturbing. “I was living in a household where the dad voted ‘leave’ and the mum wanted to stay. It felt quite personal, like some people wanted me to leave. If the referendum had happened earlier I might have gone elsewhere. I have lots of friends of different nationalities who wanted to come here and are now planning to go elsewhere,” she said. The dramatic decline is confirmed by AuPairWorld, Europe’s biggest au pair agency, a German internet-based company that sends thousands of young people to the UK each year. Susanne Becker, its spokeswoman, said that in the first half of 2015 it had 21,000 applications to become au pairs in the UK. This year that slumped to 12,000
Nicholas Hellen Social Affairs Editor
Milena Wurmer, from Germany, works for Tom Harrison and Catherine PIckstock, who are pro-EU, but are finding it difficult to hire a replacement for her
Brexit felt quite personal, like people wanted me to leave
Stressed heads exclude children as young as three Sian Griffiths The number of four- and fiveyear-olds excluded from primary schools is on the rise, according to an expert who runs schools for children asked to leave mainstream education. Des Reynolds, chief executive of the Engage Trust, which runs nine “alternative provision” academies for 550 children, said head teachers preoccupied with academic league tables were expelling even very young children for behaviour they would have spent time correcting in the past. “My youngest pupil is three, and was permanently excluded from a nursery school,” he said. “Our biggest growth area is the undersevens, where we are seeing big increases.” Reynolds said young children could be excluded for behaviour such as kicking, biting, swearing or damage to property — but often such
emotional outbursts could be just a physical manifestation of anxiety. “We have created a much more academically focused system, with high levels of stress and pressure, which some of our most vulnerable children cannot cope with. Schools do not have time any longer to manage children who do not behave,” he said. Figures from the Office for National Statistics this month are expected to show a further climb in primary-age children being expelled, after the number reached 1,000 for the first time last year. A television programme next week focuses on one school that tries to work with such children — the Rosebery School in King’s Lynn. The film shows rapid improvements in their behaviour. Many go back into mainstream schools after specialist support. Excluded at Seven is on Channel 4 at 9pm on July 25 @siangriffiths6
— a 43% decline. “We are sorry about this especially for our host families and au pairs. As the UK is important for us, we keep a close eye on the Brexit negotiations and consequences for au pairing.” Tom Harrison and Catherine Pickstock, professors who live in Cambridge, need au pairs to help care for their three children, because Harrison travels every week. Last year they rewrote the family profile, shown to prospective au pairs, to emphasise the fact they were pro-EU,
hoping to encourage applicants. It helped them recruit Milena Wurmer, 19, from Germany, who said: “I knew they were pro-EU so I felt welcome.” However, the tactic has not worked in finding a replacement for Wurmer, who leaves soon. The family has been looking for weeks, but the number of applicants has “dropped right off ”. Maggie Dyer, of the London Au Pair and Nanny Agency, said: “There was antiimmigrant rhetoric around the Brexit
referendum, plus reports of foreign visitors getting abuse. That was reported in Europe and people remember.” But Halima Darrazi, a French woman from a Muslim family who worked as an au pair in Britain a decade ago, said: “I’m not worried about racism in the UK. France has always been worse. It’s ridiculous to rule out the UK. Where would they learn English? Maybe America? If people are scared of Brexit, they’d definitely be scared of Trump.”
Europe’s negotiators have warned that the clock is ticking — and now the countdown is sending worried patients to Harley Street for help with “Brexit anxiety”. Remainers with existing feelings of a loss of control over their personal lives are struggling to cope with the additional worry of political uncertainty. Dr Vanessa Ruspoli, a chartered counselling psychologist on London’s medical thoroughfare, said: “Brexit is an anchor that people are using to express anxieties they are having generally about not feeling in control. I would call it Brexit anxiety. “Clients will have three or four situations where they’ve tried and failed to influence the outcome — whether a job or relationship. Then Brexit, if they voted to remain, was one thing too much.” She said people who felt they could do nothing to change their lives became paralysed with indecision. “Instead of a fight-or-flight response you go into freeze — a feeling known as learnt helplessness.” For many of her patients, raising Brexit was a safe way to tackle intensely personal topics. She said some might be too embarrassed to talk about personal feelings of inadequacy or failure, so addressed the same concerns through talking about politics. “Brexit and Trump . . . are valid things to be concerned about but it camouflages deeper things,” she added. Roderick Orner, a visiting professor in clinical psychology at Lincoln University and director of a private clinic, said: “People who are generally anxious anyway will attribute their agitation and fear to whatever is going on at the moment. “Brexit raises doubts and uncertainties and anxious people find this hard to contain. However, it is real enough for people who present with Brexit syndrome.” @nicholashellen
Ministers order takeover of Muslim school after it is branded unsafe Sian Griffiths Education Editor The government has ordered the takeover of one of England’s first state-funded Muslim secondary schools, an institution where a child died and offensive books were found in the library. The books stated that a husband can beat his wife and insist on having sex with her. They were found in the library of the Al-Hijrah School in Birmingham, which became state-funded in 2001. Amanda Spielman, chief inspector at Ofsted, the schools regulator, said Al-Hijrah would be taken over by an independent academy trust on the orders of the Department for Education. The move follows a damning report by Ofsted inspectors who visited the school, which has about 750 pupils, after Mohammad Imaeel Ashraf, 9, collapsed there in March. He was taken to hospital but died soon afterwards. His funeral was
attended by more than 2,000 people. An inquest into the death, initially reportedly linked to an allergic reaction to fish and chips, will be held later this summer. In a report published last month the inspectors gave the school an “inadequate” judgment, the lowest ranking. They found bullying, a chaotic playground, weak teaching, pupils who were not “sufficiently” safe and staff who did not know what to do in medical emergencies. The Department for Education confirmed that the school’s management would be handed to an outside trust. For more than a year the co-educational Islamic school has fought through the courts to try to suppress an earlier critical Ofsted report that said its segregation of girls and boys for all lessons from the age of 5 to 16 was a breach of the Equality Act. Last week appeal court judges were asked to make a definitive ruling in the case. If Ofsted wins, up to 20
RAY WELLS
Amanda Spielman is concerned by segregation in schools
faith schools that teach boys and girls separately will be reinspected and may have to change their arrangements. Spielman said she found it “deeply frustrating” when legal challenges were “used to delay things that in our view urgently need to happen. It is rare for schools to go to court to challenge a report but sometimes the stakes are high.” The chief inspector, who studied in the sixth form at the fee-paying St Paul’s Girls’ School, said she had decided to take the case to appeal because it is “a really important point of principle”. Boys and girls taught separately in mixed state schools might not be prepared for life in modern Britain, she said. Ofsted has spent more than £66,000 on legal fees. Birmingham city council helped to pay Al-Hijrah’s legal costs, including at an earlier High Court hearing where the school was successful. “I am deeply concerned
about the idea that total segregation of children within a mixed school is acceptable,” Spielman said. “The master of the rolls said it was a very important case and I think that is right. “Segregating boys and girls in a mixed school feels as though it is depriving both boys and girls of a big part of the benefits of a school. “We have single-sex schools and I am not challenging that but the idea that you have . . . a mixed school and yet you do not have social development, stimulation, all the things that come from mixing the sexes, makes me uncomfortable. “What pupils were missing out on in Al-Hijrah was the chance to interact with the opposite sex, to prepare them for adult life.” Birmingham city council said both it and Al-Hijrah’s interim executive board were “co-operating fully” with the DfE to find a suitable academy sponsor. @siangriffiths6
Consultants throw cold water on US doctor’s ‘magic potion’ for Charlie Sarah-Kate Templeton Health Editor The American doctor flying to the UK tomorrow to examine the terminally ill baby Charlie Gard has been working closely with the British medical establishment for more than 14 years. Professor Michio Hirano, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, has collaborated
with institutions including Cambridge University, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. However, despite his credibility among British doctors and scientists, many NHS medical staff regard his intervention as unhelpful. Charlie, 11 months old, has a rare disease, infantile onset encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. Last week a High
Court judge suggested Hirano visit Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) to discuss Charlie’s care. Hirano has offered to treat him with an experimental gene therapy he believes has a 10% chance of improving muscle strength and bringing a “small but significant” improvement in brain function. One British consultant, who did not wish to be named, dismissed the treatment,
saying: “The American doctor seems to be hoping this is a Lily the Pink magic potion.” Alastair Sutcliffe, professor of general paediatrics at University College London, said: “Charlie has one of the most severe of mitochondrial diseases and is untreatable. Gene therapy is in its infancy.” Since 2003 Hirano has collaborated on research with Professor Douglas Turnbull, the Newcastle University
scientist behind pioneering work to create three-parent babies in a bid to avoid mitochondrial disease. A consultant at GOSH expressed concerns about the impact of the case, which has attracted global attention, on other patients. “Whenever you have a setting like that, inevitably you are going to have distraction from other people. It is a tense atmosphere and is not
conducive to care,” he said. “If a family gets into conflict with doctors it can make staff defensive and nervous. The less robust go off sick, they can threaten to resign. It is an awful setting to be in as an NHS professional.” GOSH declined to comment. Letters, page 20. Losing a child, Magazine, pages 36-37
Charlie Gard has brain damage and cannot see, hear, move or cry
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Army of activists ties up fire inquiry
MAX BUTTERWORTH
Tenants warned council of shoddy job Jon Ungoed-Thomas
Residents fear their voices are being drowned out by those with a different agenda PHILIP TOSCANO/ANDY RAIN
Andrew Gilligan The public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster may not start hearing evidence until six months after the fire, amid confusion about who can claim to speak for victims. A spokesman for the inquiry, to be conducted by the retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, said it “hoped” to start the main hearings “this year”. Terms of reference are being consulted on and are expected to be decided next month. “We hope to have the first hearings in September,” said the spokesman. “But they will be preliminary hearings, not evidence hearings. I would certainly hope that evidence hearings would start this year.” The Taylor inquiry into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster started evidence hearings a month after the event and produced an interim report after 3½ months, on August 1. The Scarman inquiry into the Brixton riots of April 1981 started hearing evidence in June that year and reported in November. However, Moore-Bick faces greater difficulties than Taylor or Scarman, with up to 60 organisations involved in the refurbishment of the tower and at least nine groups claiming to speak for survivors. One organisation, Justice4Grenfell ( J4G), has been widely quoted in the media despite having no one from the tower in a leadership role. One of its co-ordinators lives in a £650,000 house in Kensal Green, about two miles away, and another in a £700,000 flat in Ladbroke Grove, a mile away; one representative, Pilgrim Tucker, is a professional activist from Tufnell Park, six miles away. J4G and Tucker have links to the Radical Housing Network, a group of hard-left organisations involved in direct action, “bailiff resistance” occupations and protests across London, during one of which a property trade fair was stormed and an estate agent’s window was smashed. Two J4G members spoke at a large Socialist Workers Party rally on July 8.
Moore-Bick: head of Grenfell inquiry, which hopes to hear evidence before end of year
One high-profile victims’ group has no one from the tower in any leadership role. One representative lives six miles away
The Justice4Grenfell group has links to the Radical Housing Network, a hard-left group
J4G takes an uncompromising line on the fire, posting on its website a Radical Housing Network video stating that it was “an act of war . . . and it’s time to take the gloves off”. The group claims officials are engaged in a “cover-up”, stating on its Facebook page that “at least 150 people have died”, almost double the police estimate of 80. It has strongly criticised Moore-Bick as a “social-cleansing judge”. Another J4G leader, Ishmahil Blagrove, is a long-standing radical activist who lives about a mile from the tower. In a speech after the disaster he said it was not time for violence but added: “When I’m ready to start the fire, I will start the fire . . . And if we do decide to burn down anywhere, we are going to take the dogs down to Chelsea and let them off the leash.” The network is involved with the Grenfell Action Group, which includes at least one resident of the tower, Eddie Daffarn, who wrote a blog post warning that it was a fire risk, and another man, Joe Delaney, who lives on the same estate. However, the blog admits that “much of the content” is written by the Radical Housing Network, and all inquiries for the group are handled by the network. Long before the fire, the blog adopted a confrontational tone, describing the tower block’s landlord as “immoral”, “corrupt” and “evil”. At a public meeting last week Kensington and Chelsea council’s leader, Elizabeth Campbell, and other officials were not the only targets. Some of those present were also frustrated with their fellow residents. “There’s no point for them [Campbell and the others] to come, if it’s just for you to say it’s all lies,” one woman said. Another said: “I think there are some who are trying not to listen to the people who are here to answer.” Representatives of longer-established groups tended to be more willing to give Moore-Bick the benefit of the doubt. “It looks like he was pretty open,” said Olesea Matcovschi, who chairs the Lancaster West Residents’ Association. “We are going to work closely.” Eman Yosry, treasurer of the Silchester
The fire at Grenfell Tower, west London, killed around 80 people last month Residents’ Association, which covers the blocks neighbouring Grenfell, said: “Let’s work together with them.” One prominent estate resident said: “People are angry and they are right to be. But there’s are outsiders coming into the community, trying to use that anger for their own benefit rather than solving our problems.”
The inquiry spokesman said: “There are a wide range of groups with different levels of links to the community. We try to err on the side of inclusivity. We have spoken to Justice4Grenfell on the basis that we are being inclusive and open, but that doesn’t mean we give equal weight to every group and it doesn’t imply any sort of judgment as to who they represent.”
The contractor that installed the cladding at Grenfell Tower was investigated over allegations of “poor workmanship” during the project, according to new documents. A report by the block’s management company — at first classified as confidential — lists a litany of complaints from residents, including concerns about shoddy work by the contractor. The management company, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), concluded there was no merit in any of the complaints. The investigation was discussed at a KCTMO meeting on March 31 last year while the works were in progress, but the relevant section of the agenda is marked “confidential”. A copy of the five-page inquiry was subsequently given to residents. David Collins, former chairman of the Grenfell Tower residents association, said: “They were unwilling to listen to what we were telling them about the appalling manner and quality of the construction works.” It is understood KCTMO thinks residents’ concerns were taken seriously and were properly and independently investigated. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, wrote to Theresa May yesterday over concerns about a “postcode lottery” in emergency responses to tower block fires. A BBC Newsnight investigation on Friday found that only 31 of the country’s 44 fire services would have automatically sent a high ladder to a similar fire. @JonUngoedThomas
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Becks’ bash outdone by Camilla’s do
PHOTOS: BEN CURTIS
Harper Beckham had a party at the palace but the duchess’s 70th birthday event is more exclusive Roya Nikkhah and Robin Henry Memo to David Beckham: this is how the royal family holds a proper party. Only a few days after Beckham stirred an outcry by publishing pictures of his daughter Harper playing princesses at Buckingham Palace, the Prince of Wales threw a birthday bash to remember for his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, who turns 70 tomorrow. The black-tie affair for 250 of the The Duchess of Cornwall: joined by children, sister and former husband couple’s closest friends and family began with a champagne reception last night in the gardens of Highgrove, Charles’s Gloucestershire estate, and moved indoors for a dinner sourced from the prince’s organic farm. Only the most loyal, discreet members of Charles’s inner circle are understood to have been invited and none of them is likely to follow Beckham’s example by plastering pictures of the occasion on their Instagram accounts. Camilla’s birthday will instead be marked by the release tonight of a new official portrait of Charles and his wife taken by Mario Testino, the celebrity photographer who is widely credited with furtherBeckham with Harper at Buckingham Palace
ing the reputation of Princess Diana, Charles’s first wife, as a global style icon. After a week of mostly hostile reactions to the news that the Duke of York had invited the Beckhams to use Britain’s most famous residence for their daughter’s sixth birthday party, the pretend princesses gave way to real royals as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and former King Constantine of Greece headed the Highgrove guest list. Camilla was joined by her son Tom, daughter Laura and sister Annabel as well as her former husband, Andrew Parker Bowles. Penny Junor, author of a new biography The Duchess: the Untold Story, said the latter’s presence should not be a surprise. “They speak endlessly and often on the phone,” Junor said. Charles is understood to have given a speech paying tribute to his “darling wife” of 12 years. The Sunday Times established last week that Harper and her friends are far from the only outsiders to enjoy parties at the royal palaces. A largely unpublicised royal arrangement allows charities, trusts and other organisations with a connection to a member of the royal family to hire palace facilities for functions — provided the royal in question attends. The exact amount generated from these events is not disclosed in the palace accounts but it is understood to form a large portion of the income classified as “recharges for functions and other”. This income has raised £32.9m over the past six years. Additional reporting: Rhal Ssan @royanikkhah
Joel Kioko, performing in a version of The Nutcracker in Nairobi last year, is an athletic dancer with similarities to his hero, the Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta
Teen leaps from Nairobi slum to top UK ballet school Richard Brooks Arts Editor A teenager from the notorious Kuwinda slum in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, has been awarded a place at the English National Ballet School in London, even though he has never seen a full-length ballet on stage. Joel Kioko, 17, who has also been offered a scholarship, took up dancing only three years ago after he followed a female cousin to ballet classes in Nairobi. He intended “to make a nuisance of himself”. “He only went along to annoy her before, effectively, gatecrashing the lessons,” said Emma Flett, whose Flett
Films made a seven-minute short about Kioko when he was in the UK for his audition in April. Recalling his first lessons in Nairobi, Kioko says in the film, Joel’s Story: “I thought, what is this strange dance? It is not like Kenyan dancing. So I did not fall in love with ballet straight away. “But when we did the men’s class and I could jump and turn, I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life.” He now feels the responsibility of showing that dance can be a route out of poverty as well as a passion. “The kids back home don’t have anything. So I’m an example to them. And, if I
Kioko: dancing is route out of poverty
mess up, I think they’re going to be just done for. That’s the pressure I feel,” he said. In March more than 2,000 people were made homeless when a fire started swept the Kuwinda slum. Kioko, who was recommended to the ballet school by his American-born teacher in Nairobi, Cooper Rust, is an athletic dancer with similarities to his hero, Carlos Acosta, in his ability to leap, twist and turn. Acosta originally came from a poor background in Cuba. While in London, Kioko met Tom Holland, star of the new Spider-Man film, whose acting breakthrough was in the stage version of Billy
Elliot. Holland is an ambassador for the Nairobibased charity the Lunchbowl Network, which looks after vulnerable youngsters and where Kioko now helps out. Joel’s Story, to be screened at the ITV Studios in London on Thursday, will help to raise about £20,000 for Kioko’s living costs. “It’s amazing that I learnt my dance moves here in London and you in Africa,” Holland says in the film. “But they are the same moves. An amazing connection.”
ST DIGITAL
VIDEO: from slums to stage thesundaytimes.co.uk
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
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Building of HS2 to cost £403m a mile
BUSH CRAFT MICHAEL DODGE
Richard Brooks Arts Editor
A government-commissioned estimate puts the final bill at twice the official figure Andrew Gilligan The HS2 high-speed rail line will cost more than £400m per mile, making it the most expensive railway in the world, according to new calculations for the government. The estimate, commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT), was produced by Michael Byng, the expert who devised the standard method used by Network Rail to cost its projects. Byng said that under his “rail method of measurement” the line’s first phase from London to Birmingham would cost almost £48bn, double the official figure and almost 15 times the cost per mile of the latest TGV line in France. The full scheme, including extensions to Manchester and Leeds, would cost up to £104bn, he said. The first 6.6 miles alone, from Euston to Old Oak Common, would cost £8.25bn, or £1.25bn a mile. Byng said he had attended meetings to discuss the figures with ministers and the senior civil servant responsible for the project, who he said was “very worried” that the official costs were unrealistic. The revelation comes as HS2 managers try to maintain momentum tomorrow by confirming the final decision on where the Manchester and Leeds arms will run. However, the government faces intense pressure to find money for public sector pay, schools, the police and housing after the Grenfell Tower disaster. John Spellar, the former transport minister, said HS2 was an “ever-deepening bottomless pit” and called for a reassessment. Byng was earlier asked by Lord Berkeley, chairman of the Rail Freight Group, which represents goods users, to evaluate the cost of the route’s most expensive section from its terminus at Euston to Old Oak Common in west London. His £8.25bn calculation for this stretch includes a complicated redevelopment of Euston and a long tunnel. The official budget for the entire 119-mile route to Birmingham is £24.3bn. “HS2 has not questioned the figure, or my methodology, nor have they come up with any structured estimate of their own,” Byng said.
“A couple of days later I got a call from the DfT saying, look, if 6.6 miles is going to cost us £8.25bn, what chance have we got of getting to Birmingham? I said: I’ll work it out for you. “Michael Hurn, the project sponsor at the DfT, is a very good guy and is very worried at the advice he’s been given [by HS2]. The big contractors are also worried. They’ve said when they submit a bid it’s nowhere near [as low as] the estimates that HS2 have got for the job.” The main contracts are yet to be awarded. HS2 said it “did not recognise” the Byng figure and was “confident we will deliver the project on time and on budget”. The DfT said: “We are keeping a tough grip on costs and the project is on time and on budget.” Even on the official estimate, however, phase 1 will cost £204m per
ACCELERATING COSTS Cost per mile of high-speed railway (2015) HS2 (Euston-Old Oak Common*)
£1.25bn
*Estimates by Michael Byng
HS2 (phase 1 estimated*)
£403m HS2 (phase 1 official)
£204m Germany
£34m France
£28m 6.6 miles
China
£24m Regent’s Park Euston
Old Oak Common Hyde Park River Thames 1 mile
mile at 2015 prices, seven times more than the most recent TGV scheme in France, six times more than the ICE high-speed lines in Germany and eight times more than its equivalents in China. On Byng’s calculations, phase 1 will cost £403m a mile. “It is certainly the most expensive railway in the world,” he said. The figures do not include trains, which will add about £7bn to the bill. Last year The Sunday Times revealed how HS2 and the DfT had already spent more than £2bn on the scheme, including buying hundreds of properties, before an inch of track has been laid. Preliminary work is due to start this summer. The Euston scheme, which the local MP, Sir Keir Starmer, called a “mess” that would “devastate” the area, means demolishing 215 homes along with hotels, restaurants, shops and pubs, putting about 3,000 jobs at risk. Starmer, Berkeley and others say that if HS2 does go ahead it should save money by starting at Old Oak Common, where passengers could transfer to Crossrail, reaching much of the West End quicker than via Euston and the Tube network. Asked why the project was so costly, Byng said: “We live in a very heavily populated, property-owning democracy which has very high use of railways, so land is very expensive and disruption is very expensive. People have rights and are prepared to stand up for them. “The railways have also inherited the malaise of British construction — an inflation of consultants. In the rest of the world soft costs, such as consultancy and planning, make up 12-15%. Here it can be as high as 35%.” Joe Rukin, from the Stop HS2 campaign, said: “HS2 is a massive waste of money and the bill is only going to increase. It’s amazing, given the pressure on the public purse, that anyone still thinks this is a good idea.” Berkeley said: “It is such a mess. The costs have gone through the roof and although they’ve spent a billion on consultancy they still haven’t got a price. Eighteen months on, the contractors will tell them how much it’s going to cost — but it’ll be too late to stop them by then.”
The ex is target of next Ladybird
Fans of Kate Bush gather in Melbourne yesterday for a mass dance celebration of the British singer’s 1978 hit Wuthering Heights. The annual event, first held in Sussex four years ago, aims to raise awareness and money for victims of domestic violence
It may be the perfect present for the person you wish you had never met. With spoof Ladybird books including How It Works: The Husband and How It Works: The Wife selling more than 4m copies, 11 new titles are on the way this autumn, including The Ladybird Book of the Ex and How It Works guides to the brother, the sister and the baby. The writers, as with the other titles, are Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris, and the illustrations come from the Ladybird archive of 13,000 drawings. “The brother and sister books . . . will be good as gifts,” said Hazeley. “They explore sibling relationships, which psychotherapists are only comparatively recently exploring.” The Ladybird Book of the Ex is all about revenge and division. It opens with an image of an empty room. “Ah well,” thinks Martin. “At least she left me a packet of cigarettes and a little bicycle made of pipe cleaners.” The writers have hopes for another new title, The Ladybird Book of the Nerd. Nerds “run the world now”, said Hazeley. “That’s why we always wanted this title. After all, the two of us are nerds.” They added that How It Works: The Husband, which has sold more than 500,000 copies since it appeared in autumn 2015, has been a hit because women do not know what to buy their men. “Women either just think of the latest Jeremy Clarkson car DVD or our Husband book,” said Morris. “It shows that women don’t know much about their husband, even though they do at least know who he is.”
11
The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
COMMENT
Rod Liddle
ST DIGITAL
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Split from Euratom and it’s whoops apocalypse for our nuclear industry
T
he one thing that almost stopped me voting “leave” last June was the fear that the government really might pour all the money we reclaimed from the European Union into the vast, ravenous, eternal maw of the NHS, that fathomless pit beside which the Labour Party hunkers, murmuring, Gollum-like: “My pressshhusss, my presshussss.” Dissing the NHS is one of the things you can’t do as a politician. You could sneakily slip your hand up the Queen’s skirt and get a better press. It’s about the only thing left in Britain we’re allowed — indeed, obliged — to be breast-beatingly proud of, despite the fact that it is, by European standards, decidedly mediocre. But my worry went deeper. The one thing the EU was good at was ensuring that European governments spent a quantum of income on stuff that was placed beyond the short-term political fray — and, in particular, scientific research and development. These are the budgets that get squeezed when, to assuage immediate popular opinion, domestic governments bung some enormous wodge to the nurses or the firemen. No wonder an opinion poll suggested that 93% of UK scientists would vote to remain in the EU. One top scientist asked me, quite mystified: “Who on earth were those other 7%?” And then there is Euratom, an obscure treaty that has suddenly poked its nose into the public consciousness. It regulates the movement of nuclear materials across the EU (and much more, as we shall see) but pre-dates the EU and is thus under the auspices of the European Court of Justice, from which Theresa May is determined to escape. Already the howl-round has begun. The Royal College of Radiologists says thousands of UK cancer sufferers might not get their radiological treatment if we leave Euratom — a specious allegation and true Remoaner scaremongering.
l I have often thought about
earning an extra few quid by renting out a room in our house on Airbnb. But I dislike such a vast proportion of the world’s population that I can’t imagine who I’d allow to stay. No foreigners, for a start. No young people, homosexuals, middle-class couples, children, transitioning people, estate agents, cyclists, vegans, the bloody elderly with their endless cups of tea. And Airbnb would surely have something to say about my bigotry. A woman in California is in trouble for having cancelled the booking for a woman called Dyne Suh (is that a giant, extinct lizard, as voiced by trailer trash?). Her explanation was: “I wouldn’t rent it to u if u were the last person on earth”and “One word says it all. Asian.” Well, full marks for honesty, I suppose — if not, perhaps, for inclusiveness.
This is a thing we’re very good at: better than tennis, footie. And it’s at risk
Deals can be struck relatively quickly to ensure we still get our radio-isotopes. That’s not the real problem. I was at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, near Oxford, a couple of weeks back. They’re smashing atoms of tritium and deuterium together, trying to get more energy out of this fusion process than they put in, a tricksy procedure that needs large concrete walls and powerful magnets, ie, a bit bigger than those you played with as a kid to make a face out of iron filings. Eventually, though, we will have a clean, safe, virtually renewable and abundant source of energy, given that deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen and there’s loads of the stuff around, gagging to be extracted from sea water or purged from common-as-muck lithium. We are the world leaders in this technology — nobody, anywhere, does it better. That’s one reason the EU sited its Joint European Torus laboratory in the UK. The spin-offs, such as the brilliant robotics developed at Culham to handle these energetic, promiscuous and disputatious very small things, have brought in more than £100m worth of orders worldwide. This is something we’re very good at — better than tennis, football or universal healthcare. And it is threatened by three things. First, the short-termism of domestic political funding: fusion power may be 20 or 30 years away. Second, the removal of funding from the EU. And third, that obscure treaty, Euratom. The treaty is vital not only to Culham but to our entire nuclear industry. Mea culpa. I voted “leave”. And I still think that was absolutely right, though I’d rather be shepherded towards that sunlit upland of self-determination with a degree of verve and conviction, rather than by an asthmatic dog with a broken back. But I meant leave the bureaucratic, undemocratic mess of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker et al. It was never about leaving Europe. And Euratom is not a minor detail, it is crucial.
Leftie teachers are wronging the right
Visiting royalty Hurry up: the Beckhams are having a party here at 7
Britain’s only right-of-centre teacher, Calvin Robinson, has been speaking about the continual leftie indoctrination of children. Robinson, the head of IT at a north London school, who is also famous for being the only teacher in the country to have posed for a photograph alongside Michael Gove without his face being contorted into a rictus of foaming hatred, says his colleagues “brainwash” students: Labour, good; Tories, evil — that sort of thing. In my day teachers tended to vote Tory, but allegiances have long since shifted. And there is something about the modern liberal mindset that thinks it is inviolably correct and cannot possibly be challenged. Luckily, most teachers are too thick and despised by their pupils for this brainwashing to stick.
Making a prophet from advertising
PHOTO: MATT DUNHAM; WORDS: NICK NEWMAN
l Is the tennis star Johanna Konta really British? She was born in Sydney, Australia, to Hungarian parents. My colleague Simon Barnes has written that Konta, among others, challenges our notions of
what is meant by nationality in this modern age. I find her nationality very easy to define, though. She was British until about teatime on Thursday. Now she’s something else. As is that limping Scottish bloke.
Perhaps the Advertising Standards Authority should up its security after the Qur’an Project launched an ad campaign with grandiose claims in the Richmond & Twickenham Times. First, that excited readers were eligible for a free copy of Islam’s pacific and inclusive manifesto (they weren’t, sadly). Second, that the prophet Muhammad is the “most documented man in history”. Hmm. Comparatively little is known of Muhammad — and he is certainly less documented than, say, Ant and Dec. After a complaint from Christian Concern, the ASA conceded that the Qur’an Project breached its guidelines. Good. Now check out that promise about all those virgins waiting when a terrorist blows himself up.
12
The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS
Stroke survivors ‘are dumped by the NHS’ Sufferers feel abandoned after leaving hospital and face waiting up to a year for the right treatment — or paying for it themselves Jon Ungoed-Thomas Stroke survivors are being left to languish at home with a “shocking” lack of support. Many say they feel abandoned by the NHS. Juliet Bouverie, chief executive of the Stroke Association, said a new national plan was required to help the 1.2m stroke survivors in the UK. Some have to wait up to 12 months for psychological help. “As a stroke survivor, your life and the life of your family is turned upside down,” she said. “Many stroke survivors say they feel abandoned, as if they have dropped off a cliff. The provision in some areas is shocking.” About 100,000 people suffer a stroke
every year in the UK; it is one of the country’s leading causes of death. Andrew Marr, the broadcaster and journalist, who suffered a stroke in January 2013, said better support for stroke survivors — many of whom are of working age — could help them return more quickly to employment. He was back at work within six months, but largely because he paid for additional physiotherapy. Stroke survivors can wait up to four months for speech therapy and up to a year for psychological support, according to data from the Royal College of Physicians. Stroke survivors say there is insufficient physiotherapy, a treatment which would ensure the best recovery. A stroke strategy, launched in 2007, outlined a 10-year plan to overhaul stroke Andrew Marr, who had a stroke in 2013, paid for physiotherapy to help him get back to work sooner
services and has seen significant improvement in acute treatment. The Stroke Association is calling for a new action plan to build on improvements and outline a new strategy for the rehabilitation of stroke victims. Nathan Ridgard, 40, a self-employed businessman and a father-of-two from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, suffered a stroke on New Year’s Eve 2012. After being discharged from hospital, he said he was given some leaflets by the NHS on coping with a stroke, but struggled to read them because of his poor vision. “I just felt I had been dumped out in the world,” he said. He received some NHS physiotherapy, but also paid for private sessions to supplement them. He has since made a good recovery. Professor Tony Rudd, National Clinical Director for stroke at NHS England, said: “The quality of care and survival rates for stroke are now at record highs. We are working with the Royal College of Physicians and others local health service leaders to improve rehabilitation care for everyone who suffers a stroke.” @JonUngoedThomas
COURTESY OF MICHELE FINDLAY
Terminally ill Ella Findlay sky dives before ending her life alone because of fears any companion might be prosecuted
Sky diver’s life to help test law on assisted dying Sian Griffiths Education Editor One of Ella Findlay’s last acts was to sky dive, as well as to have tea at the Savoy and explore Norway. After reaching the end of her bucket list by getting a tattoo, the 36-year-old — who had both multiple sclerosis and terminal cancer — took
her own life at home, alone except for her cat Minnie. Her story will be presented as evidence in a five-day challenge to the law on assisted dying that starts in the Appeal Court tomorrow involving Noel Conway, 67. The retired college lecturer has motor neurone disease and less than a year to live. The Star Trek actor Sir
Patrick Stewart, patron of the Dignity in Dying charity which is supporting Conway, said the current law “fails dying people”. “The terminally ill wife of a dear friend . . . attempted to end her own life by taking stockpiled medication,” he said. “She was unsuccessful but later managed to suffocate
herself with a plastic bag while her husband was out. An assisted dying law would have allowed her to die with dignity, not traumatised and alone.” Findlay’s mother, Michele, said her daughter had died alone for fear that friends and family would be prosecuted if they helped her. @siangriffiths6
GCHQ chief warns boys’ club culture puts women off tech Richard Kerbaj Security Correspondent Women feel undervalued and isolated and can ultimately be driven out of the technology industry by a “boys’ club” culture, according to a top official at GCHQ, the intelligence centre. Alison Whitney, a deputy director at GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said women felt their “opinions aren’t valued; that they can’t speak out”. “It’s also something to do with a kind of boys’ own, clubbytype culture . . . there’s the sort of business that gets done over a pint in the afterwork scenario,” she added. “Well, that’s not me. I know men [whom] it’s not for either but that kind of clubbytype feel is something that a lot of women feel uncomfortable with.” Only one-third of the 700 employees of the NCSC are women. Whitney said she was having to consider new ways of recruiting staff, such as using Mumsnet, the parenting website. She hopes to attract different types of people, such as women who left the workplace to have children but want to return, describing them as an “untapped” group of people. “It’s all too easy to think that you recruit people at 21,
22, when they come out of university and that is the only option that is available to you,” Whitney said. “How shortsighted is that?” She also voiced her frustration that schoolgirls were unfairly criticised if they were “geeky”, and received no encouragement from teachers to join the industry. Whitney said: “It’s a pretty damning indictment of society if this is still the case — if women doing scientific subjects are still viewed as something that is not quite the done thing.” She said the agency was desperate to change attitudes. Up to 40% of women in the technology sector quit their jobs, many blaming working conditions. The NCSC launched a CyberFirst Girls online competition in March that attracted 8,000 teenage applicants. While she was encouraged by the enthusiasm she was “pretty appalled” that some of the girls were seen to be “strange” or “geeky” by their friends because of their interest in technology. MI5 has had two female bosses in its history, but GCHQ has always been run by men. Whitney said she hoped to see a woman leading it within the next 10 years. @richardkerbaj
Stolen guns raise fear of summer of terror Richard Kerbaj and Bojan Pancevski British counterterrorism authorities have stepped up their monitoring of Islamists in the UK amid fears that terrorists are arming themselves for a bloody summer offensive in Europe. The National Crime Agency (NCA) fears British Islamists will try to exploit a surge in illegal firearms following a series of thefts in the past month of weapons from a Portuguese military facility and the discovery of a suspected jihadist arms cache in Belgium.
Ian Cruxton, a deputy director at the NCA, warned that Islamists have become increasingly savvy at searching for new ways to source guns amid growing links between jihadists and career criminals. Assault weapons such as AK47s are of particular concern. “If criminals know where to get access to firearms and ammunition then we should not be blasé or ignorant of the fact that that might also be the place where someone with a terrorist motivation might also try and access weapons,” Cruxton said. @richardkerbaj
Wood-burners harm neighbours’ health Jonathan Leake If your neighbours have a wood-burning stove, they could be wrecking your health, scientists have warned. They found that every wood stove releases billions of tiny toxic particles into the air that can drift into nearby homes, especially at low wind speeds. “Even modest woodburning in densely populated residential areas may lead to pollution exposures comparable to those from traffic sources,” Gary Fuller, a researcher at King’s College London,
told a conference last week. He analysed pollution levels and sources in cities such as London, Manchester, Birmingham and Norwich, showing that wood-burning accounted for up to 31% of toxic particles in the air. He also found that suburban toxin levels peaked in the evenings and on Sundays, when more people were at home. The Stove Industry Alliance said 1.25m homes have the devices, with 200,000 more installed each year. It added that new designs would slash emissions within five years.
13
The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS POLITICS WORLD NEWS
Philip Hammond, Boris Johnson and David Davis have each other in their sights as Theresa May’s authority drains away. Some backbenchers fear that an attempt to eject May could lead to another general election which the Tories could lose
Mr Grey, Mr Blond, Mr Brexit — the bullets begin to fly As party discipline crumbles, three senior Tories have fired the first shots in a battle that could tear the government apart too much alcohol, but, with Theresa May’s position in peril, those watching knew they were witnessing a proxy battle for the succession between two of the government’s biggest beasts. “They were like a pair of rutting stags locking antlers,” one witness attested.
TIM SHIPMAN Political Editor
When David Davis and Boris Johnson met on Thursday at a summer party thrown by The Spectator, they confronted each other not as colleagues but like the US and Russian armies coming together on the Elbe in 1945 — erstwhile allies who knew they were now political rivals. There was bonhomie, much of it forced, as the Brexit secretary joked that the foreign secretary was “a failure”. Johnson was visibly irritated as Davis flirted with and then embraced his sister, Rachel Johnson, a journalist who made waves last year by opposing her brother on Brexit and then joining the Lib Dems. Davis told Johnson, “You’re too toxic for your own sister,” and boasted that he had persuaded Rachel to defect back to the Conservatives. “Boris had been trying to persuade her for a year. With one drink I persuaded her,” he boasted to other party guests later. “He was goading Boris,” remarked an ally of the foreign secretary, “saying: ‘You’re a failure; you’re a failure.’” In normal circumstances such exchanges would be dismissed as a harmless consequence of too much sun and
HAMMOND IN HOT WATER Davis accuses Johnson of “going on manoeuvres” in the hours after May’s general election setback became clear. Johnson loyalists blame Davis’s friends for a series of briefings denouncing the foreign secretary’s abilities and spreading smears about his private life. One ally of the Brexit secretary claimed last week that if Davis replaced May as prime minister, he would demote Johnson to the post of party chairman — a role he has publicly said he does not want — and that if he refused the post, the Davis camp would threaten to leak allegations that Johnson had a fling with a former aide to May — an allegation for which there is no evidence and which the foreign secretary vehemently denies. When two senior figures from each camp confronted each other over glasses of Pol Roger champagne at the Spectator party, the Johnson ally called for the briefings to stop and said that if they did not, “I’ll kick you in the bollocks.” His opponent, equally refreshed, replied, “Well I’ll kick you in the bollocks.” West Wing-quality dialogue it was not. May also attended the party, her second media drinks do last week after her soiree for Westminster lobby corre-
spondents in Downing Street’s garden on Monday. Never at ease in the presence of journalists, she did not circulate widely or stay long. It is a measure of the prime minister’s weakness that the Davis-Johnson rivalry is not even the most serious row tearing the government apart. Last Tuesday’s cabinet meeting — and a second “political cabinet” that followed it — were the most fractious gathering of May’s top team since she took power a year ago last week. In both meetings ministers became enraged by the behaviour of Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and what his colleagues regard as his “tin-eared” approach to the election result. Since June 8 cabinet ministers have been lobbying for the government to end the 1% cap on increases in public sector pay to placate voters sick of austerity who
flocked to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. His insistence on financial discipline despite a fresh onslaught on Tuesday drew a “collective intake of breath” from other cabinet ministers. He singled out train drivers as “ludicrously overpaid”. The chancellor, who has a reputation for condescending to his colleagues, got into hot water when he sought to suggest that newly automated trains would help stamp out strikes because the overpaid men could be replaced by women. Hammond said train-driving was now a simple job and then stumbled over his words. The home secretary, Amber Rudd, interrupted: “Oh, even we could do it!” Colleagues, including Justine Greening, the education secretary, then attacked his perceived sexism. “Everyone piled in,” said one cabinet minister. “But it didn’t stop him. He just
PM RIVAL FLASHES £1,000 WATCH First there were Theresa May’s £995 leather trousers, now the man who wants to replace her as prime minister is wearing a titanium Garmin watch costing £1,169.99. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, wore the device after intelligence chiefs said spies could use his Apple watch to listen to his conversations and steal Britain’s Brexit secrets. Asked whether the Garmin Fenix Chronos watch — advertised as “for athletes and adventurers” — was “government issue”, Davis said: “You must be joking — that’s a thousand-quid watch.”
Davis and his ‘thousand-quid watch’
kept going. It was classic Philip.” Eventually May herself intervened to stop Hammond digging his hole deeper: “Chancellor, I am going to take your shovel away.” Afterwards, at the political cabinet meeting, there were further heated exchanges between Hammond and Greening over the education secretary’s demand for £1.2bn of extra spending on schools. In what appeared to some ministers a co-ordinated assault on Hammond, she won support from Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, who is demanding pay rises for nurses. Those present say it was a robust but worthwhile exchange but one that was bound to leak. As one cabinet source said when contacted by The Sunday Times: “Chris Grayling [the transport secretary] said to everyone that they should be careful not to go running to journalists. So that’s worked well, then . . .” MOCKERY REPLACES FEAR With May’s authority in free fall, cabinet has become a venting room for ministers pursuing their own agendas, which for many includes positioning themselves for a future leadership contest. Among those who fancy their chances are Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, Priti Patel, the international development secretary, and Andrea Leadsom, leader of the Commons, who made a point of visiting the scene of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Last week Leadsom claimed she had let Downing Street know her plans but a senior No 10 source said: “That is a total lie.” Junior ministers who want promotion have found common cause with allies of Davis, who believe his best chance of success lies in striking now. But backbenchers, particularly those who want a hard Brexit, are determined
to avoid a coronation that might install a poor campaigner without scrutiny or force a general election that derails Brexit. The executive of the 1922 committee made clear to May last week that they would caution MPs against any move to force her out. This is significant because Graham Brady, the chairman of the ’22, would have to organise a vote of no confidence if 48 MPs demanded one. One colleague said: “Brady has a lot of power. If he is getting letters, if I were him I’d be filing them in the bin.” Younger MPs want to skip a generation to someone such as Dominic Raab, 43, a justice minister who is helping Davis with Brexit legislation. From the 2015 intake, the former soldiers James Cleverly, 47, and Tom Tugendhat, 44, elected as chairman of the foreign affairs committee last week, are open about their ambitions. The contender who most embodies what has changed, though, is George Freeman, the head of May’s policy board, who celebrated his 50th birthday on Wednesday in parliament’s Jubilee Room, where John Redwood launched his challenge to John Major in 1995. Joking about “failed leadership bids”, Freeman mocked May’s mess, comparing 1967, the year of his birth, with 2017: “The Conservative party battling racism in its ranks, being hostile to foreigners, still harbouring plans of a properly planned economy. And things in 1967 weren’t very good either.” Pre-election fear of Downing Street has become mockery. Freeman referred to the growth of “no-go areas” and joked: “Residents with nothing but contempt for parliamentarians. Swearing, threats, sometimes even physical intimidation. Thankfully, visiting No 10 has become more enjoyable.” As an MP once loyal to May put it: “Let them hate, so long as they fear. They’re laughing at her now. She’s done. It’s just a matter of time before she realises it.”
Davis attacks plan to keep UK subject to European court
Social care war as NHS fines 22 councils for bed-blocking
JUSTICE
HEALTH
Tim Shipman Political Editor Bojan Pancevski Brussels David Davis will go on the attack this week against an attempt to give European Union judges a say over life in the UK long after Britain has left the union. The Brexit secretary will accuse Brussels of the political equivalent of match-fixing in football with its proposals for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to exercise influence after March 2019. Under the EU plan,
European judges would be able to reopen any case previously heard under the ECJ if evidence is updated or new evidence presented. “We think that’s a bit of a nonsense,” a senior government source said. “They’re pushing their luck.” Ministers have been under pressure to ditch Theresa May’s pledge not to let the ECJ hold sway over aspects of British life. Davis, however, will make clear when he meets the EU negotiator Michel Barnier tomorrow that Britain wants control of its laws back. He will propose that
where different industries require regulation, Britain and the ECJ should nominate judges to sit on a panel with an independent chairman. He will tell Barnier: “If you’re Manchester United and you go and play Real Madrid, are you going to let Real Madrid nominate the referee?” EU sources said that Davis will have to “evolve” on the role of the court. Tomorrow’s meeting is largely a photo opportunity, with the real negotiations beginning on Thursday. The skirmishes came as Tony Blair said Britain might never leave the EU
and Brussels might grant the UK membership of the single market and allow restrictions on freedom of movement. The former prime minister said he had been told that Britain could join an “outer circle” of countries outside the euro. In an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News today, Blair says: “I think it’s possible now that Brexit doesn’t happen. Every day is bringing us fresh evidence that it’s doing us damage economically.” Labour and the Conservatives both said that Blair was “out of touch”.
Caroline Wheeler Deputy Political Editor One in six councils in England have been fined by the NHS for bed-blocking as the health service and local government go to war over social care funding. The NHS has fined at least 22 councils for causing delays in discharging patients and threatened 11 others with charges. The news will fuel tensions between local government and the health service, which have been
pitted against each other in the battle to close a £22bn hole in health funding. Earlier this month, council leaders hit out at “last-minute plans” to further penalise authorities that fail to reduce bedblocking. Under proposals from Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, councils that underperform in helping NHS patients go home could have their share of a £2bn social care fund — announced in April’s budget — withheld. Last night, Izzi Seccombe, a Tory council leader who speaks on community wellbeing for the Local
Government Association, said creating divisions could “exacerbate the social care crisis”. Councils outside London can be fined up to £130 a day for each bed blocked under the regime while those in the capital face fines of up to £155 a day. Shadow social care minister Barbara Keeley said fining local authorities for bed-blocking was “unacceptable”, adding: “Councils . . . are struggling to meet the social care demands of their communities as a result of the cuts made to council budgets over the past seven years.”
COMMENT PAGE 20
ADAM BOULTON ZOMBIE MPS COME ME ALIVE ALIVE
14
The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS
SAS allies hit by claims of unlawful killing After British troops were accused of shooting Afghan civilians, elite Australian soldiers face similar allegations
INSIGHT Australian special forces soldiers are alleged to have shot dead unarmed civilians and plotted to plant weapons on bodies to cover up their actions during the war in Afghanistan. The allegations echo those levelled against Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) and special forces troops from New Zealand and America, giving rise to concern that there may have been a culture of unlawful killing by the allies’ elite troops, who carried out hundreds of night raids on Afghan homes. The Sunday Times revealed this month that the Royal Military Police (RMP) had uncovered evidence suggesting the SAS killed civilians in cold blood and planted weapons on their bodies to give the false impression that they were armed combatants. This allegedly occurred during night
raids that were aimed at capturing Taliban leaders but are claimed to have resulted in high numbers of civilian deaths because of poor intelligence and soldiers setting out to kill rather than detain the suspects. Last week a leak of hundreds of secret defence documents disclosed that Australian special forces allegedly shot dead several civilians in the south of the country between 2009 and 2013 — the same period and location at the centre of the allegations against the UK’s SAS. The inspector-general of the Australian Defence Force is reported to have begun an inquiry into the killing of two children by elite Australian soldiers. One incident is claimed to involve a teenage boy shot in Kandahar province in 2012 at a time when there was no known insurgent activity and troops had not been fired upon. This newspaper previously disclosed that Operation Northmoor — the RMP’s investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan — had uncovered allegations that the SAS planted weapons on the bodies of dead Afghans to justify unlawful killings. Last week the Australian special forces were accused of using the same tactic. A special forces veteran told the Australian broadcaster ABC News that “the carriage of ‘drop’ weapons was common”.
Special forces carried out hundreds of night raids on Afghan homes
FOUR COUNTRIES IN LINE OF FIRE Britain The SAS is alleged to have covered up evidence suggesting it killed unarmed civilians and falsified mission reports in Helmand province between 2010 and 2013. Australia Elite troops allegedly killed civilians in southern Afghanistan between 2009 and 2013.
United States Special forces soldiers allegedly killed 17 civilians in 2012 and 2013 in Wardak province. New Zealand The country’s SAS Regiment is alleged to have been involved in the killing of six civilians, including a three-year-old girl, in Baghlan province in 2010.
The documents report unease about a “desensitisation” and “drift in values” among the country’s special forces regiment, mirroring concerns expressed by senior officers in the British Army. However, the Ministry of Defence has repeatedly claimed there is no evidence of criminal behaviour by British troops in Afghanistan. Two years ago a criminal investigation was reopened into US special forces after accusations that 17 civilians were killed in Wardak province in 2012 and 2013. Several more were allegedly tortured. A source who worked alongside the SAS in Afghanistan said British, US and Australian special forces regularly exchanged personnel in order to learn from each other’s tactics. There was also close co-operation over the targeting of suspected Taliban militants. Earlier this year, there were calls for an independent investigation into New Zealand’s SAS Regiment after a book by two investigative journalists accused its soldiers of being involved in the killing of six civilians, including a three-year-old girl, in a botched raid in Afghanistan’s Baghlan province in 2010. The authorities denied any wrongdoing by the soldiers, but the journalists accused politicians and the military of a cover-up.
CULTURE
BARD OF BRITAIN JEZ BUTTERWORTH INTERVIEW, PAGES 4-6
Letters reveal bond of love killed father and son in Great War Nicholas Hellen Social Affairs Editor When a decorated officer and his son died within an hour of each other at the Battle of Passchendaele, their sacrifice became a symbol of the senseless slaughter of the First World War. There were tributes in the press and thousands attended the memorial service of Major Harry Moorhouse DSO and his son Captain Ronald Moorhouse MC at Wakefield Cathedral in their native Yorkshire. Now, as their relatives prepare to join the royal family to mark the centenary this month of the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres, of which Passchendaele formed part, they have discovered letters that show how the caring behaviour of the father led both men to their deaths. The Moorhouses were involved in an attack to capture the Flanders ridges around Ypres in October 1917. They were hampered by heavy rain that churned the soil into a swamp and were exposed to heavy artillery and machinegun fire. When Ronald was mortally wounded, his father, then an acting lieutenant-colonel, insisted on fetching a doctor, walking through shell holes and swamp under sniper fire. An unknown soldier described what happened in a letter written in pencil to Harry’s wife, Susanna: “I tried to dissuade him and told him I was going back myself . . . and would send a Dr on from the nearest aid post.” Harry insisted on going, however. “We had not gone far before the sniper spotted us & started a hot fire & about half way I heard a groan and turned to see the Major stumble forward & collapse . . . He died in my arms. “I eventually got on to the aid post & the Dr went out to his son & on his return reported him dead also.” Now Rebecca Lisle, Harry’s great-granddaughter, who unearthed the letter, has also found documents showing that Ronald need never have been there — but his father
had arranged to have him transferred to his battalion, the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Lisle, a children’s author who lives near Bristol, said: “I like to think they would have survived without that disastrous chain of events. Harry thought he was looking out for Ronald. Until now I don’t think anybody has pieced it together.” Lisle will be at the official ceremony at the Tyne Cot cemetery at Ypres and will lay a wreath at the Menin Gate. The event will include the horse puppet Joey from the play War Horse. The Third Battle of Ypres took place between July 31 and November 10, 1917. About 250,000 British troops were killed or wounded for an advance of five miles. @nicholashellen
Harry and Ronald Moorhouse were killed in Flanders in October 1917
Gazumping returns, even as prices fall Helen Davies House prices dropped in June for the third consecutive month, according to Britain’s biggest estate agency network. The average price of a home has fallen to £301,114, according to research from the estate agent Your Move, to be published tomorrow. But there is evidence of gazumping — when a buyer’s offer is accepted by the seller, but then trumped by a higher rival bid — returning to some parts of the UK. The combination of gazumping in some areas amid falling prices in others is a sign of the confused state of the UK market.
The estate agency group Countrywide said nearly 6% of offers for properties accepted in the east of England this year had been rejected in favour of a higher one from a different buyer, 30 or more days later. Oliver Blake, managing director of Your Move, said: “The election and its result have merely exacerbated a slowdown in price growth that can be seen since the beginning of the year. However, predictions of a sustained correction still look premature.” What is going on in the housing market? Home, pages 12-13
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
WORLD NEWS
Black Axe gang uses voodoo to snare migrant women in Italy A weakened Sicilian mafia has cut a deal with machete-wielding Nigerians whose trade is slavery and prostitution ASHLEY GILBERTSON /VII FOR UNICEF/REDUX/EYEVINE
MICHAEL SHERIDAN
Palermo, Sicily
Palermo flying squad officers thought they had heard it all when it came to mafia oaths, rites and blood ceremonies. They had not counted on voodoo. But there are newcomers in the narrow streets where Cosa Nostra once ruled, members of a Nigerian mafia called the Black Axe. They have changed the traditional map of organised crime, profiting from human trafficking, drug trading and rural slavery rackets thanks to the surge of illegal migration across the Mediterranean. The Sicilian mafia, weakened by years of trials and arrests, has cut a deal with the Black Axe to split up territory and divide the spoils, according to police and prosecutors. As usual with the mafia, there are rules. The Africans have agreed not to carry guns, so they settle accounts with machetes. And they have unabashedly cashed in on a trade once considered shameful by the old dons — prostitution. Like the Black Axe, the women come from Benin City in southern Nigeria. They are not aware of what awaits them. “When a girl wants to make the journey she asks around the nightclubs at home in Benin City to find a ‘mama’,” said Isoke Aikpitanyi, 33, who was sent to Italy by people traffickers and later escaped from the vice trade. “The mama puts her through a voodoo ritual where she swears an oath of obedience to the ‘mother of water’ to protect her from the desert and the sea. On arrival [she finds] the only way to be freed from the pledge is to pay €25,000 [£22,000] earned from her customers.” Other Nigerian women, sitting with Aikpitanyi at a centre for migrants in a whitewashed alley, told stories of girls deceived into thinking they would find good jobs, only to vanish into safe houses run by Nigerian mamas and gangsters deep in the Ballaro quarter, a warren of streets and markets in Palermo. Beatings, confinement and voodoo threats to a girl’s family at home are common, the women said. Every year Nigerian women vanish or are found murdered, according to the Italian media. Recently a 10-year-old girl arrived at the migrant centre pregnant. Aikpitanyi can testify to the Black Axe gang’s ruthlessness and to its skill at running rings around European officialdom. “They simply use an ID document over and over again so that different people borrow it,” she explained. She knows because an ID document she had used was later found on the badly burnt body of a murdered Nigerian prostitute. Italy’s reception facilities are buckling, with 200,000 migrants expected to come this year, but it has failed to persuade its European partners to take in more people or to let rescue ships dock in their ports. According to Frontex, the EU border agency, Nigerians were the biggest group among the more than 85,000 migrants who have been taken ashore in Italy so far this year, accounting for some 10,000 of those saved at sea by naval ships and aid groups.
Mary, 18, is in a safe house in Taormina, Sicily, for victims of sex trafficking after being brought from Benin City, Nigeria Almost all the women from Nigeria who risk the desert journey through Libya to cross the Mediterranean come from Benin City. Aikpitanyi said there is no security threat there — it lies far from territory ravaged by the Boko Haram jihadist group in northern Nigeria — but there are plenty of fine houses built by people who have made a success of the trek to Europe. Police say the huge migrant influx is fuelling the supply of illicit labour and reaping profits for the Black Axe. Some of the girls come ashore with Sim
cards and numbers to call so that they can contact the gangsters as soon as they have been rescued, according to police, city officials and women activists. Boys, mostly minors, are lured from migrant reception centres and used as drug couriers, while men and women are put to work in the fields and vineyards of southern Italy, where recent court cases and trade union investigations show that forced labour is rife. The Black Axe originated in the 1980s at Benin University as one of Nigeria’s “campus cults” — anti-elitist student con-
fraternities that later became associated with violence. Its tentacles extend around the worldwide Nigerian diaspora. Initiates are beaten and made to pledge allegiance in a toast of blood and spirits. “These Nigerian groups have the same characteristics and operate in the same way as the mafia,” said Leonardo Agueci, an Italian prosecutor. Although the vows of silence and loyalty mimic the Sicilian tradition and have kept the law at bay, the Palermo flying squad had a breakthrough last November after investigators found their
first informer from inside the Black Axe. Nineteen men were arrested across Italy on charges including human trafficking. Anti-migrant sentiment is not strong in the Sicilian capital. “The fact is Palermo has always been a city where races got along well. We have 14 nationalities and 25 languages spoken here,” said Massimo Castiglia, newly elected head of the Ballaro district as he walked through a market, greeting stallholders. The city has picked Leoluca Orlando, a veteran anti-mafia campaigner who believes that Europe should welcome
ASHLEY GILBERTSON /VII FOR UNICEF/REDUX/EYEVINE
Palermo SICILY
NIGERIA
400 miles
Weapons seized from Nigerian gangs in Sicily where women forced into prostitution wait for clients by the side of the road
Benin City
migrants, as its mayor for the fifth time. He has transformed Palermo into a tourist destination better known for great street food than for assassinations. Nobody wants a new outbreak of gang warfare or a spike in racial conflict. Orlando argues that the “prohibitionist” policy on migration serves to make the mafia richer. For him the solution is not to turn migrants away. Europe should open its doors because it needs people. “We’re dying, Europe’s dying,” he said, sitting in his booklined office in the 18th-century Villa Niscemi. “We shouldn’t be throwing migrants out of Europe, we should be throwing states who won’t accept them out of Europe.” He added: “Our position here in Palermo is that international migration is a basic human right. So, make it legal.” The Italian government disagrees. Last week it sent the interior minister, Marco Minniti, to Tripoli to offer financial aid plus training and equipment for Libya’s border forces to try to stop the traffic. In the two-day period around his visit about 7,300 migrants arrived in Italy aboard 10 ships. Additional reporting: Adriana Urbano
ST DIGITAL
Watch Michael Sheridan’s video about the mafia’s exploitation of migrants at thesundaytimes.co.uk
For a fistful of euros, fans get grave in Clint’s Sad Hill cemetery Matthew Campbell Santo Domingo de Silos Film enthusiasts in northern Spain have given a novel twist to the concept of crowdfunding as they attempt to restore a cemetery created 50 years ago for an epic scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. For €15 (£13), donors get a “grave” topped by a wooden cross inscribed with their name in the “Sad Hill” cemetery where Clint Eastwood stared down rival gunslingers. For a few euros more, contributors can receive a framed photograph. The initiative has proved so popular that some fans have asked if they can be buried there “for real”, said David Alba, one of the organisers, as he strolled around the site in the province of Burgos, 150 miles north of Madrid. “I’m not sure it’s allowed,” added Alba, 36. He also runs the local Leone Bar where the walls are decorated with images from the film. It is named after Sergio Leone, the Italian director who created this
highly rated spaghetti western. For Alba and other enthusiasts, the 1966 film set in the American Civil War — and famed for a haunting soundtrack by Ennio Morricone — is the best western yet made and its denouement in the cemetery is one of the finest scenes in cinema history. ALAMY
Built by Spanish soldiers during the dictatorship of Franco, the cemetery set was all but forgotten after filming ended, becoming overgrown and invisible as locals carted off crosses for firewood or building material. Now a different army is renovating the grounds. Volunteers from the Sad Hill Cultural Association,
including a local priest who appeared as an extra in the film, have painstakingly unearthed a 40-metre circle of cobblestones at the heart of the cemetery where Eastwood, playing a bounty hunter, fought a duel with two rivals over buried gold. “Just to touch those stones where Clint Eastwood stood is enough of a reason to Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood at the grave of Arch Stanton in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There were 5,000 crosses on the original set
unearth them,” said Joseba del Valle, one of the volunteers. They have also planted a tree similar to the one that featured in the film — complete with a hangman’s noose — and erected a sculpture of Eastwood. “It’s taken a lot of work,” said Alba, pausing by a cross painted with the name
Metallica, the American heavy metal band and one of 1,500 sponsors from all over the world. Donations are used to buy materials for restoration as well as to fund local cultural events connected to the film — including a projection of it on a giant screen at Sad Hill to mark its 50th anniversary last year. The aim is to replace all the 5,000 crosses that featured on the original set, restoring the cemetery to its full glory — and creating a magnet for “cinema tourists”. It is an exotic novelty for Santo Domingo de Silos, the nearest village, whose 300 inhabitants can expect to reap rich dividends. “Until recently our tourism has revolved around our Benedictine monastery which attracts a lot of pilgrims,” said Emeterio Martin, the mayor and local hotel owner. “Our young people have gone to live in cities and it is hard to start businesses here. This cinema tourism is very different to what we are used to but could revitalise us.”
He has received numerous calls from Americans wanting to start “western-style” hotels near the cemetery where guests could re-enact scenes from the film. A canny farmer has already started offering excursions on horseback up through the hills to the cemetery. There are as yet no signposts showing the way. Some residents are proposing that the mayor rename a street as El Bueno, el Malo y el Feo or after Eastwood or after his fellow star Lee Van Cleef. A documentary film is being made about the restoration in which Eastwood, 87, appears briefly. To the disappointment of the volunteers, however, he has yet to secure his own grave at Sad Hill. Nor, for the moment, has the mayor asked for his own name to be put on a cross. “I am worried that if I do they’ll carry me off there the next day,” he said. “I have the luck of the hanged man.” @mcinparis
NEWS IN BRIEF HONG KONG VIGIL FOR DISSIDENT Thousands marched in Hong Kong yesterday in memory of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who died of cancer on Thursday. The silent vigil took place hours after his funeral, amid calls to free his widow Liu Xia, who is under house arrest.
GERMAN FURY AT TOURIST KILLINGS Berlin officials said they were “dismayed and furious” after two German women were stabbed to death at a popular Red Sea resort in Egypt on Friday, saying it was a deliberate attack on foreign tourists. The Egyptian knifeman injured four others after swimming between beaches to carry out the assault.
NEWS WORLD NEWS
Rotund Rob: the UK link in Trump’s Russian mire A flamboyant publicist and the president’s son are now at the heart of the Moscow scandal
TOBY HARNDEN Washington If any other adviser had allowed his presidency to be compromised by Russia and a flamboyant British “freak” with a love of silly hats, Donald Trump’s retribution might have been brutal. But the adviser in question was his eldest son. So Trump lashed out publicly at his son’s critics last week instead of acting decisively to try to close down the scandal that the 39-year-old had caused — a flaw that the president’s enemies hope is another step on the path to his downfall. Don Jr, as Trump’s son is known within the family, is due to testify before Congress about his decision during the 2016 presidential campaign to meet a Russian emissary who he was told had information that the Kremlin had produced in “support” of his father. Whatever his explanation, the White House can now no longer deny — as it has for so long — that the Trump campaign was willing to accept help from the Russian government in its quest to defeat Hillary Clinton. The evidence is in email after incriminating email released by Don Jr himself last week after The New York Times got on his trail. The revelation — by far the most serious since allegations were first made a year ago that Russia was actively backing Trump — is causing deep frustration among his fellow Republicans. Representative Trey Gowdy, a Trump loyalist, could barely conceal his dismay concerning the White House “amnesia” about Russia. The “drip, drip, drip” of disclosures “is undermining the credibility of this administration”, he said. Politics aside, however, what makes this drama unlike any other is the outlandish cast of characters involved. Don Jr is the eldest of Trump’s three children by his first wife, Ivana. He is also the only one to have rebelled against their father, refusing to speak to him for a year as a teenager during his parents’ divorce. “Rather than going directly into the family business, he headed to Colorado and tended bars and roamed
through the mountains,” said Marc Fisher, co-author of Trump Revealed, a biography of the president. “The father was not at all pleased so there’s been some very public tension in their relationship.” Once he had returned to the fold, Don Jr turned into a bumptious alter ego of his father, becoming a senior figure in the family property business and the Trump presidential campaign. Some see his unstinting fealty to his father as a form of atonement and go so far as to compare the Trumps to the Corleones in The Godfather film trilogy, who value blood ties and loyalty over ability and nous — Don Jr in the role of Fredo, the family loser. In Moscow in 2013 Don Jr met Rob Goldstone, a rotund, Manchester-born music publicist with a penchant for hard partying and outrageous headgear. Based in New York, Goldstone is on what he calls “a gap year” with his boyfriend cruising in the Adriatic. During stops in Venice and Dubrovnik he posted on Facebook pictures of himself with young men before turning uncharacteristically silent last week. CIA analysts are working on the theory that this almost comically unthreatening and apolitical figure was an unwitting tool of Russian intelligence in the relentless courting of Trump. One of Goldstone’s clients is Emin, a Russian pop singer who is both the son of a wealthy oligarch and the former son-inlaw of the president of Azerbaijan. In 2013 Emin’s father staged the Miss Universe contest — formerly owned by the Trump Organisation — in Moscow. That brought Don Jr to the Russian capital, where he met Goldstone. They formed a fateful friendship. Trump himself also met Emin and Goldstone. A photograph on Goldstone’s Instagram account, until it was made private last week, showed them dining together in Las Vegas in 2013. Emin’s account showed a video of Trump wishing him a happy birthday three years ago. Goldstone contacted Don Jr on June 3 last year to say that Emin’s father had met Russia’s prosecutor-general, who had offered “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary”. In a phrase that sent shudders down the spines of Trump loyalists when it was revealed last week, Goldstone spelt out
A keen hunter, Don Jr has released a series of emails that show his father’s campaign was willing to accept Russian help in its quest for the White House
Goldstone: met Trump Jr in Moscow
He sent shudders down the spines of Trump loyalists
that this “high-level and sensitive information” was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”. Any prudent US campaign official would have immediately contacted the FBI, as this proposal was a potential breach of electoral law. But Don Jr replied: “If it’s what you say, I love it . . .” Six days later at Trump Tower in New York, Don Jr met Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer viewed by the CIA as a proxy for President Vladimir Putin. She is reported to have powerful Russian clients and had a role in the Kremlin’s unsuccessful efforts to persuade Congress to repeal the Obama-era law penalising top Russian officials blamed for the death in jail of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who had exposed high-level fraud. Don Jr brought in Jared Kushner, the husband of his sister, Ivanka, and Paul Manafort, who was the Trump campaign chairman. In a shock development two days ago, Rinat Akhmetshin, a RussianAmerican lobbyist described as a former Russian military intelligence officer, confirmed that he was also there. No outsider knows for sure yet what was discussed at the meeting. Don Jr has characterised it as a waste of his time because Veselnitskaya only wanted to discuss Magnitsky. But at the very least his emails show that three senior figures in the Trump campaign were eager to receive help from Moscow. They also throw new light on other fragments of the Trump-Russia story. Just
after the Veselnitskaya meeting was arranged, but before it happened, Trump promised a “major speech” about “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons”. The speech was never made. Seven weeks after the meeting, Don Jr dismissed as “phoney” claims that Russia was trying to help his father. Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, will want to know more. The old Watergate question of “what did the president know and when did he know it?” is now crucial. Trump maintains he knew nothing of the meeting. But, given his closeness to Don Jr and Kushner, many doubt this is plausible. One White House official said that initially Trump was privately “furious” with his son for getting involved with a “freak” like Goldstone. Later he stood four-square behind him, telling reporters travelling on Air Force One: “Don is — as many of you know, Don — he’s a good boy. He’s a good kid. And he had a meeting, nothing happened with the meeting.” In his biographer’s view, Trump took the criticism of his son personally. “It is the classic relationship of a narcissist with his children,” said Fisher. “He sees them as extensions or mirrors of himself. He doesn’t like it when people come after the kids. They’re his most trusted advisers and so he’s not in a position where he can contradict them or embarrass them in the ways he does
mere hirelings. In a way it’s a stronger relationship but it’s also more delicate.” That presents a problem when it comes to Kushner, whose dealings with Russians are of increasing interest to Mueller. Kushner reportedly failed to declare the Veselnitskaya meeting when completing an obligatory FBI form — a potential crime. The White House official said Trump was concerned about Kushner’s role. “For the first time President Trump may be questioning whether Jared really deserves to be in the circle of trust.” l Donald Trump reportedly asked Theresa May to “fix” hostile British press coverage of him before his proposed state visit. According to a transcript of a private conversation with May, reported in The Sun on Sunday, the president said: “I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa.” She replied: “Well, you know what the British press are like.” He responded: “I still want to come, but I’m in no rush. So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier. When I know I’m going to get a better reception, I’ll come and not before.” @tobyharnden
ST DIGITAL
Meet the players in Donald Trump Jr’s email scandal. Watch the video at thesundaytimes.co.uk
America’s black Millennials heed ‘call home’ and flock to Deep South Josh Glancy Atlanta East Atlanta village feels a lot like some of the hippest parts of Brooklyn. Freelancers flit between sushi bars and graffiti-covered coffee shops, working remotely while sipping on flat whites. But there’s a noticeable difference: many are AfricanAmerican, a reflection of the city’s burgeoning black bourgeoisie. “Atlanta is a place where black people are succeeding and making money, starting things, creating things,” said Danielle Ayers, 35, who moved to Georgia’s capital from Philadelphia three years ago, to work for a not-forprofit group that provides tools to charities. “Philly wasn’t like that.” Ayers has been drawn by a familiar Millennial menu: cheaper rent, a better lifestyle, job opportunities. But something else is going on too. Ayers is one of tens of thousands of young AfricanAmericans leaving the megacities of the northeast — Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York — and heading down to the sun belt of the south. Many are returning to states where their ancestors were slaves. In 2014, about 82,000 black Millennials moved to the south. The pull factor for these “buppies” (black yuppies) is not just economics; many feel they are returning to their roots, responding to a “call home”. Ayers has always felt drawn
to the south, where her father’s family have lived since enslavement. “It was very important to me as an adult. Now I can make choices, to be around black people,” she said. “Atlanta is such a melting pot, you can often forget about the oppressive nature of the south.” Some are calling the trend the “reverse migration”, a reference to the great migration of the early to mid20th century, when about 6m African-Americans fled the segregation and oppression of the south to seek opportunities in the booming northern metropolises. Atlanta, once known for its big civil war battle and as the birthplace of Martin Luther King, has become an
increasingly attractive destination in recent years. A first boost came from homegrown hip-hop stars such as Outkast and Ludacris, whose wide smile graces a giant welcome poster at the airport arrivals terminal; more recently hit television shows such as Atlanta and The Real Housewives of Atlanta have glamorised the lives of the city’s black community. Nonetheless, many of Aimee Castanell’s friends were shocked when she told them she was leaving New York to move to Atlanta. “They looked at me like I was insane,” said Castanell, 38, who works in digital strategy. “Why would you want to go and do a thing like that?” Two weeks after arriving
from Brooklyn she has no regrets. “I was tired of spending a bajillion dollars to rent a tiny flat,” she said. “But also the north is not as rosy as it seems. I found New York to be an extremely segregated place. “In Atlanta there is a larger array of black people from across the socioeconomic strata. You can go to the fanciest restaurant, or a hole in the wall. You’ll see people.” Similarly, young AfricanAmericans are flocking to Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas, where there are politically powerful black communities. Today about 57% of African-Americans live in the south, while the black populations of New York and Chicago both fell by more
GUY D’ALEMA
The TV show Atlanta, with Donald Glover and Zazie Beetz, has put the city in the spotlight
than 50,000 in the first decade of the 21st century. Troy Brown, 27, who works in finance, moved to Atlanta from Chicago four years ago. “People are friendlier here; life isn’t so expensive,” he said. “Where I was from, it just seemed like things were so hard for us.” His complaint is a common one: that life for many African-Americans in the great liberal cities of the north, the “receiving stations” of the great migration, has not worked out as well as they had hoped. Isabel Wilkerson, author of a book about the great migration, attributes this to a “misguided” and often hostile northern response to the demographic shift that prevented African-Americans from integrating properly. “The south has become a more welcoming place,” she said. “The beauty of what’s happening now is that African-Americans are acting as Americans, with the full privileges that were denied to their ancestors, to decide for themselves where they want to live.” In Atlanta the only real danger is that the renaissance is going a little too well: house prices are climbing as the city gentrifies. Ayers has considered following friends to Baltimore, where prices are lower. “I just love it here, though,” she said. “I love how mixed it all is. In the northeast white people would say, ‘You stay over there — I don’t acknowledge you.’ ” @joshglancy
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
WORLD NEWS
Remnants of Isis cling on with just one goal: keep killing till they die Snipers are shooting soldiers and civilians in the Old City despite Iraqi claims to have finally defeated the jihadists Tom Westcott Mosul Fighting could still be heard in the shattered Old City of Mosul yesterday, six days after Iraq declared victory, as Isis diehards prolonged the death throes of their caliphate. Their last narrow stretch of Mosul’s historic centre teeters above a steep descent towards the River Tigris. Although only 50 yards wide in places, taking it has proved the hardest part of the nine-month battle to liberate the city. Yesterday there were more airstrikes against snipers firing from their redoubt. The fall of the Old City was repeatedly reported last week after Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, had prematurely announced its liberation on Sunday, but on Thursday evening heavy fighting continued unabated on the front lines. Daesh, as Isis is known to the Iraqis, harried advancing troops from basement hideouts and an extensive underground network with sniper fire and an apparently inexhaustible supply of grenades. Iraqi army soldiers moved warily across the rubble — fearful of hidden BYRON SMITH
A suspected Isis fighter is questioned by Iraqi soldiers in the Old City
CLAIRE THOMAS
gunmen shooting up at them from spider holes, aiming for the groin. They were in no doubt that the mostly foreign fighters had only one goal left: to go on killing until they died. “They pop up from holes in the ground, like rabbits, shoot at us and then disappear, and they move around too fast for the airstrikes to get them,” a wild-eyed soldier complained. Lieutenant-General Abdul Ghani alAssadi, commander of the Iraqi special forces counter-terrorism units, said: “We know most are Russian and French because we hear them talking on the radio, but we are actually fighting all the countries of the world here. “These foreign Daesh never give up. They pretend to surrender but, at the last minute, they blow themselves up.” Ground forces were so close to Isis that they could hear fighters shouting to each other in foreign languages. One soldier scoffed that their Arabic was so poor they could not pronounce “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) correctly. “We had a Belgian Daesh fighter calling us kaffir [unbelievers],” said a senior officer, smiling wryly. “Imagine — he came to Iraq to fight us and calls us kaffir.” Iraqi forces said they had arrested Russian, Chechen, Belgian and German Isis members, mostly women, in recent days. A Russian girl of 17 had been deployed as an Isis sniper. On Friday a sixyear old girl survived when her mother detonated a suicide belt near Iraqi forces. A handful of fighters captured on the front lines have been executed on the spot, including a Chechen who was shot on Thursday by a large, makeshift firing squad of vengeful soldiers. Another prisoner, overweight and naked, lay on the bonnet of a Humvee hurtling through Mosul’s ruined streets towards the special forces headquarters. After such a long battle against a ruthless enemy, most Iraqi troops are in a precarious mental state. They have lost countless comrades, friends and family members and are increasingly horrified by evidence of wanton cruelty inflicted on civilians trying to escape the Old City. A video from a dead Isis fighter’s phone, circulating on social media, showed a sniper targeting civilians fleeing towards army positions. The sniper’s intermittent commentary was in Uzbek. He chuckled while he felled civilians and mocked an elderly lady beating her
A child receives treatment for injuries caused by a homemade bomb planted by Isis in Mosul’s Old City. The jihadists have been shooting fleeing civilians breast in distress and despair after a relative was shot dead beside her. “I’ll show you what Daesh is,” said Brigadier-General Ammar Jassem, whose unit of the 16th Division of the Iraqi army has been on one of the final front lines. He opened the screen of a camcorder, which revealed a naked boy, about two years old, writhing on a pile of rubble
Smuggler claims captured Briton Jihadi Jack is top-level ‘slaughterer’ Louise Callaghan Gaziantep A Syrian smuggler who tried to buy the Oxford-born “Jihadi Jack” from his Kurdish captors says he was told the young Isis recruit was of too high a value — because people believe he is a top-level killer. Jack Letts, who was dubbed Jihadi Jack after he went to Syria in 2014 at the age of 18, has claimed in messages to his parents that he has never committed any violent acts. He fled the caliphate last month. Abu Jassem — the pseudonym of a smuggler who runs a network of spies stretching from Turkey through Isis territories — revealed to The Sunday Times last week that Isis contacts had told him Letts was a “slaughterer” who had replaced the notorious fellow Briton Jihadi John when he was killed in 2015. There is no publicly available evidence to support the claim that Letts was lined up as the heir to Jihadi John — which Letts’s mother described yesterday as “bullshit”. But a western intelligence source said last week Letts was certainly an Isis member. The source said he is believed to have been a fighter and is suspected of committing criminal acts. Jassem, a former rebel
Isis is said to have lined up Jack Letts, left, as a replacement for Jihadi John, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi fighter who helps to smuggle Isis members out of the caliphate, has given accurate information in the past. Letts, who converted to Islam at school, has said that, after running away to the Isis caliphate, he was dismayed by its brutality. It is understood he spent more than a year in hiding before escaping. He is being held captive by the YPG, a Kurdish militia that is fighting Isis. Jassem claims he tried to buy Letts from the YPG. He reasoned that the white convert could provide him with valuable information before being sold to his family for a lucrative sum. But the YPG refused to sell.
Intrigued, Jassem delved into Letts’s background, sending messages to Isis fighters in Raqqa who are former members of his own rebel battalion to ask why he was not for sale. “They told me to be careful,” said Jassem. “That the Kurds did not talk about him. That he had replaced the British Kuwaiti Emwazi.” Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born former rapper from west London, became notorious as Jihadi John after appearing in videos in which western hostages were beheaded. He was killed in a drone strike. Jassem said he had been told that Letts was Emwazi’s
replacement. “He was a slaughterer,” Jassem said. “They were going to use him in propaganda.” Letts, who appeared in no Isis videos, has told the BBC from his cell that he hired a smuggler to help him escape the caliphate by motorbike before walking through a minefield into YPG territory. Jassem said he had been told that the smuggler was supposed to take Letts into areas controlled by Arab rebels, from where he would be taken to Turkey. Instead he was betrayed and the smuggler sold him to the Kurdish militia. Officials believe he is being debriefed by the YPG. It is not known whether US special forces, who have a heavy presence in the area where he is being held, have taken part in his interrogation. If Jassem’s claims are true, the convert could yield a wealth of information. His parents, John Letts and Sally Lane, have complained that the Foreign Office reneged on a promise to return their son home once he left Isis territories. The authorities say his situation is complicated by the fact that he is being held by a militia, not a state, in a country where British consular services have been suspended. @louiseelisabet
I WANT TO EXPLAIN THINGS TO MY MOTHER Nearly three years ago, in September 2014, Jack Letts told his mother he was in Syria. He has claimed that he was infatuated by the idea of an Islamic state, but that a year later the sheen began to fade. “I believe that the Islamic State teaches the people a huge creedal mistake,” he said in a message. It is thought that by December 2015 he was
hatching a plan to be smuggled out of Raqqa and head to the border, but it failed. Life was becoming dangerous. “I stand out a mile. Obviously I’m not Syrian. Some time they’re going to get me,” he said in a message to his parents. Letts was later arrested and is thought to have spent more than a year in Isis cells before his release.
“I was argumentative when I was in an Isis prison [and] threatened with death,” he told his parents. “[I] made it clear to the Isis judge that I thought he was not a Muslim.” Last month he revealed that he had escaped from Raqqa and was being held in a Kurdish prison. “I found a smuggler and walked behind him through minefields,” he said in a
series of messages to the BBC. “[We] eventually made it near a Kurdish point where we were shot at twice and slept in a field.” He told Al-Araby television that he wants to be freed. “I have no idea what is going to happen to me now. It’s the future, no one knows except for Allah,” he said. “I want to see my mum and explain to her some things.”
heated to a clearly unbearable temperature by the mid-morning sun. The corpses of a woman and man lay nearby. “We tried to rescue the child this morning but a Daesh sniper killed one of my men as he got close,” Jassem said. “We were just 20 metres away, but I can’t risk any more of my troops.” By 4pm they had still not been able to
reach the child. After five hours in the 44C summer heat, his chances of survival were slim. Some civilians are still being rescued. On Thursday three Yazidi women taken by Isis as sex slaves and a toddler were pulled from the rubble by Iraqi special forces. Later that day, advancing soldiers made contact with 50 Isis family mem-
bers, mostly foreign, crammed into a tiny underground chamber, from where they refused to move. They would wait for death as the battle raged overhead. “Every day we say it is finished, but every day we are still fighting,” Jassem said. Plucking children from the killing zone, News Review, page 22
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
COMMENT
ESTABLISHED 1822
Now is not the time to loosen the public purse strings
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s the government limps towards the summer parliamentary recess, it does so with arguments about the disastrous general election and disagreements over policy still raging. The latest of those disagreements, as we report today, is over public sector pay. A chorus of cabinet ministers, arguing that the 1% cap on public sector pay increases had cost them a significant number of votes last month, has argued for a relaxation. They include Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, while Michael Gove, the environment secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, and Justine Greening at education either want larger recommendations from the public sector pay review bodies to be honoured or an increase in resources, some of which will find its way into higher pay. The response from Philip Hammond, the chancellor, which was to say that public sector workers are overpaid, particularly when their more generous pensions are taken into account, was interpreted by some of his cabinet colleagues as “inflammatory”. The one thing a Tory minister cannot say to nurses and teachers enduring a prolonged pay squeeze is that they are paid too much. These battles are not, of course, all about pay. Mr Hammond, who has made public his belief that Britain not only needs a “soft” Brexit but also a lengthy transition to it, is fighting against those such as Mr Johnson who, he believes, have an unrealistic attitude towards the manner of Britain’s departure from the European Union. Those fights will continue. Yet on the narrow question of pay the chancellor has a point. Even before taking account of more generous public sector pensions, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, based on official figures, shows that despite the 1% pay cap public sector workers enjoy higher earnings on average than their private sector counterparts. That is true whether or not the figures are adjusted for the different work characteristics and qualifications of those in the two sectors. Private sector workers suffered during the recession and the gap in favour of public sector workers
increased. It has narrowed but remains in favour of those in the public sector. Mr Hammond is right to argue that it is far too soon to declare victory in the drive to restore the public finances to health. The Tories may have struggled to counter Jeremy Corbyn’s populist pledges to abandon and reverse austerity but, as the Office for Budget Responsibility pointed out a few days ago, Britain has both “a vulnerable fiscal position and a challenging political environment”. The government, it said, “will need to review the fiscal risks it has exposed itself to for policy reasons, to prepare for the cost of unexpected shocks and to address long-term pressures on receipts and spending”. This was the very opposite of a green light for a big fiscal relaxation. The Tories are in a bind over public sector pay and it is one of their own making. Enough ministers have spoken in favour of a relaxation of the 1% cap for an expectation to have built up that it will happen. If it does, however, there would be few political gains for the government. Instead, the prime minister would be seen to have caved in to pressure from Labour and the public sector unions. At the same time, recruitment difficulties in some public sector roles, notably nursing and teaching, have increased in some parts of the country as a result of the cap. Those difficulties will not easily be resolved, affecting the quality of public services particularly in areas where high housing costs mean public sector salaries do not go very far, In 2011, under the coalition, the Treasury came up with a response to this. George Osborne proposed regional pay bargaining for the public sector to break with a system of national pay agreements that had outlived their purpose. The idea was a good one but it soon died, partly because of Liberal Democrat opposition and partly because it was seen as a device for cutting public sector pay in the regions. The result of that failure is the government is stuck with a national public sector pay policy that was supposed to last until 2019-20 but is already fraying around the edges — and the chancellor is fighting a pay rise he knows he cannot afford.
Our campaigns bring action on acid and tainted blood Earlier this year, in response to both a moving interview with an acid attack victim and an increase in the number of attacks, this newspaper launched a campaign. There were ways of reducing the attacks, we argued, through tighter controls on the sale of household products with high concentrations of acid, as well as other means. As we said when launching our Acid Attack Britain campaign: “Doing nothing and allowing the toll of acid attacks to rise inexorably should not be an option. Nobody deserves to be a victim of these cowardly assaults.” After another recent spate we see the beginnings of a stronger response. Amber Rudd, the home secretary, writing for us today, announces an action plan that includes a “wide-ranging review of the law enforcement and criminal justice response”. Prosecutors may class acid as a dangerous weapon, alongside knives and guns. Sales of acid products may be restricted. It is a welcome response. These campaigns by a free press
matter. Theresa May has announced an official investigation into the contaminated blood scandal that claimed the lives of 2,400 people and inflicted misery on many others. Thousands of people were treated by the NHS with blood products contaminated with hepatitis C and HIV in the 1970s-80s. They included haemophiliacs who contracted full-blown Aids for which there was then no treatment. The Sunday Times was on to this scandal early. Our Blood Money campaign for the victims drew on their appalling experience, as we report in News Review today. Those victims included the many unfortunate enough to be born with haemophilia but also those such as the Body Shop entrepreneur Anita Roddick, who contracted hepatitis C as a result of a transfusion, the effects of which did not emerge until her death decades later. The shame of the contaminated blood scandal is that it took so long for the government to respond. The lesson is that these campaigns must continue and the response to them made much faster.
You are what you put on exes Chris Howard, the director of bullion at the Royal Mint, is clearly a man of varied tastes. He enjoys a Slightly Hung Over cocktail, a good dinner and a glass of wine, but he is not above a McDonald’s or a KFC as well. How do we know? Because of his expenses. If you really want to know someone, take no notice of what they say or do, just have a look at what they claim on expenses. All of human life (and all our weaknesses) are there, including the
predilection of MPs for duck islands, moat cleaning and piano tuning. You can probably hear the rattle of stones on glass houses, as Fleet Street was once the great bastion of questionable claims. No longer — today everything is scrutinised and questioned. So if you cannot claim expenses in your job, relish the fact that at least your behaviour remains private. And the next time you are ordering a Slightly Hung Over, you can make it a double.
Andrew Marr A cabinet love triangle could thwart the plotters The PM needs to hug Hammond and Davis close — for her own good and ours
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his summer, parties of the political season come in different grades. It isn’t always warm prosecco and overheated blather. Sometimes it’s cold Pol Roger and horses’ mouths. And after a few sips and some surreptitious whinnying, I have to conclude that the plot against Theresa May is a little more serious than I had thought. It is still more likely than not, though, that she can last a couple of years. Why? First, because a Tory leadership contest would throw yet another huge spanner into the delicate Brexit negotiations — having paused everything for a general election campaign, to go back to Brussels and say: “Sorry, chaps. Can we have another month or so out while we decide who the prime minister is?” would make the UK look terminally ridiculous. Second, it’s really hard to see how yet another prime minister, chosen, not elected, could face down the national clamour for a second general election — one the Conservatives tend to think they would lose. Most of the ministers I talk to say this. They assume that May, who seems to have gathered a bit of renewed confidence, will oversee the negotiations and then make way for a new leader, almost certainly from a younger generation than the current cabinet, in the spring of 2019. But there is a counter-argument, which goes like this. She doesn’t have the authority to do the Brexit deal. Even if she can agree the necessary compromises over law and money, she would find it almost impossible to sell them to the Tory party. Ergo, there has to be a new leader before too long. Anti-May plotters concede that the issue over halting the negotiations is a problem. But as to the general election, they point out that David Cameron’s Fixed-Term Parliaments Act could protect Tory mutineers, however cross the country felt. And that isn’t good news for May. “It was meant to be a cord to bind a prime minister’s hands; we can make it a noose.” So we could see an attempted putsch this autumn. Maybe some bold character breaks ranks and announces an open challenge. More likely, a letter from a large number of Tory MPs suddenly falls through the Downing Street letterbox. “More in sorrow than in anger . . . grateful for your patriotic service . . . but with heavy hearts . . . no longer feel full confidence . . .” That kind of thing. The Tory party conference in Manchester will clearly be important, though traditionally prime ministers have enough levers there to keep control. It now looks as if the European
repeal bill will be a bigger problem. And there are plenty of other potential parliamentary crises ahead — over public spending, Northern Ireland and taxation. So the next question is how the various key players should behave. May herself has to start with a full-hearted rapprochement with her chancellor, Philip Hammond. Even if he is isolated inside the Tory party, he speaks for the City and has the crucial decisions about public spending, as the economy slows, in his hands. He has been in close contact over the past few months with David Davis, trying to create a common position on Brexit. The prime minister may be more wary of Davis, who is now in pole position to take over. But he needs to avoid a protracted and bloody contest. That means persuading Boris Johnson not to stand. How likely do you think that is? Me too. If a triumvirate of May, Hammond and Davis presents a fait accompli on the negotiations, the Tory party will probably accept it. If not, not. In short, restoration of the government must start with a strengthening of the human triangle at its heart. The rest of the cabinet then have to decide whether they back the prime minister for real. The danger in colluding with the general plotting — and there are plenty of senior MPs on manoeuvres — is that they unleash a bloody farce of rivalries. Once this kind of thing starts, nobody can control what happens next. Frankly: how mad are they feeling? The next question is for Jeremy Corbyn. He’s had much harmless fun with May’s plea for opposition help — sending her a signed copy of
Plenty of senior MPs are on manoeuvres, but they could unleash a bloody farce of rivalries
the Labour manifesto, that kind of thing. But if the five-year parliament act is a problem for May, it’s also a problem for him. His party has to accept it is perfectly possible that the Tories stay in (circumscribed and muted) power for five years. That’s a long time. Are repeated “Tories out!” marches the best game plan? An alternative would be to maximise Labour’s parliamentary position. A united opposition front on issues such as the customs union, and hostility to further government cuts, could win over enough Tory MPs to change the direction of the government. There are plenty of senior Conservatives who believe that, because of uncertainty over Brexit and the possibility of a recession, Britain needs a major fiscal boost. Hammond may whiten at that, but it’s an argument that isn’t going away. As we have already seen over more minor issues such as the winter fuel payment and funding for Northern Irish women wanting abortions in England, this is not a government that is going to be able to hold the line on every occasion. Is it possible, therefore, that a wily Labour opposition, working closely with the other parties and some Tories, could find that, having lost the general election, it is actually exercising a new kind of influence? That we could see a shadow Labour government, less radical than its own manifesto, but nevertheless nudging Britain in a new direction on the economy and Brexit? The danger for Corbyn would be that, come the next election, voters might conclude that austerity had already been pushed to one side and a softer, gentler exit from the EU had been achieved, and that therefore there was no need to change horses. On the other hand, Labour would have shown that much of its thinking on the economy and the EU was — far from being extreme or dangerous — practical and popular. “You’ve seen what we can do with a bit of influence: let’s see what we can do in power.” It’s something for Corbyn to cogitate about on his allotment over the summer. But there is one further, crucial, point. Whatever happens when we leave the EU, and under whatever government, we have no decent future unless we radically improve our productivity. What’s the point of free-trade deals if we don’t have the services and goods other countries want? If there is one huge area for Labour and the Tories to come together and agree on, it’s a national crusade for higher productivity — a new commercial and industrial strategy for new times. What a dull thought to end on; but without it, we’re sunk. Dominic Lawson is away
Emma Barnett
I asked May about crying and set off a sexism bomb My question to the PM was fair. Calling her weak for weeping is not
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any things were going through my mind as I walked up a sunny Downing Street at 7am last Thursday to interview the prime minister. It was her first sit-down broadcast exchange since the general election on June 8. My visit also marked a year almost to the day since she had assumed office and made her “red Tory” speech outside the famous front door, where I was now posing (alongside a lackadaisical Larry the cat) for a quick Instagram shot. In the intervening 12 months, talk of “ordinary working-class families” had quickly given way to a torrent of soundbites about Brexit and coalitions of chaos. As the door to No 10 silently swung open, I was running through my questions and considering my small-talk options (Larry wasn’t going to cut it). But the one question I couldn’t get out of my head was how it must have felt at 10pm on June 8 when the exit poll became public and revealed Mrs May was unlikely to have increased her government’s majority. What went through her mind? So that’s where we began our conversation in Mrs May’s personal office, with its impressive backdrop of tall royal-blue and gold doors leading to the Cabinet Room. Usually known for her reserve and her safe responses, Mrs May revealed that her husband, Philip, had told her the exit poll was predicting a hung parliament and had then given her a hug. She used the words “shocked” and “devastated” to describe her reaction. It was at that point that I decided to ask whether she had cried. Contrary to the views expressed in some emails, texts and tweets I received after the interview went out on my BBC Radio 5 Live programme, I did not ask that question because she was a woman. Quite the opposite. And that’s why I’m determined to see off the bogus accusations of sexism that have been laid at my door. One email, from a woman, went like this:
“Hi. I am really irritated that you should ask TM if she shed a tear. Would you have asked Boris Johnson the same question? Or Jeremy Corbyn? “I’m not a fan of TM, indeed quite the opposite, but treating female politicians differently is unacceptable.” What a load of tosh. Of course I would ask a male politician whether he had cried if an unexpected and dramatic general election result had not gone his way — especially if he had used the word “devastated”, which denotes “severe and overwhelming shock or grief ”, to describe his response. It’s the natural next question, regardless of the interviewee’s sex. In fact, I would argue that anybody who thinks it’s sexist to ask a high-profile woman if she cried after a “devastating” event is themselves sexist. The point of sexual equality is that you don’t behave differently or modify the way you speak to someone based on their sex. Women don’t need or deserve protecting from fair and
Women don’t need protecting, especially if they have become prime minister
normal questions, especially if they have become prime minister. As if to prove my point, my next political interviewee, just a few hours later, was the outgoing leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, who welled up in my studio. He had decided to break his silence about his difficult decision to resign because of the constant scrutiny of his Christian faith. I asked whether it had been an emotional choice, and he told me, with tears in his eyes, that he hadn’t cried until he received a lovely text from one of his children telling him how proud they were of him after he went public. But back to my conversation with the prime minister. Despite the other matters covered in our 24-minute interview, it was inevitable that the admission by the leader of the country that she had shed a tear, albeit a “small” one, as Mrs May put it, would be the headline. Just as it would have been if Tony Blair, David Cameron or Gordon Brown had admitted as much. However, what would have been starkly different is the public’s judgment. I am generalising, but a woman crying is still viewed as evidence that she is weak or not up to the job. And a man? Brave, humane and honest. One wins respect; the other doesn’t. Those entrenched views and unconscious biases will take a long time to change, and could have even fed into Mrs May’s discomfort about admitting any weakness over the general election result. Or perhaps not. I am not a mind-reader, after all. My job is simply to try to get as close to the truth as possible through questions designed to provoke and hold people to account — regardless of sex. @emmabarnett Emma Barnett presents BBC Radio 5 Live’s morning programme and writes The Sunday Times Magazine’s Tough Love column. Sarah Baxter returns next week
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
COMMENT
ATTICUS JAMES GILLESPIE
Brexit Britain is on the money, EU It’s enough to shake the currency markets to their foundations: Atticus has uncovered a serious flaw in the euro. The problem lies in the design of the coin. If you look on one side, you get some trivial nod of deference to the country from which the coin originates, but what unites them all is the map of Europe on the front. And the country slap bang in the middle? Yes, Brexit Britain — which has never had any truck with the currency — sits proudly surrounded by all those Europeans soon to be our ex-friends. So what happens after Britain leaves the EU? Will the latter adopt a Stalinist approach and airbrush us out? Or move us into the Atlantic and drag Ireland closer to France? Of course, it could just hand all of the euros to Greece. Then it would never see them again.
Khan’s memory has gone to the dogs
QUOTES OF THE WEEK Yes, [I shed] a little tear at that moment News of the general election exit poll left Theresa May feeling neither strong nor stable
There are matters on which we have not always seen eye to eye The Queen alludes to the issue of Gibraltar during a state banquet for the King of Spain
Robust banter followed by a shake of the hand and a pint in the pub The Tory MP Simon Hart on what election campaigns used to be like before MPs found themselves assailed by death threats, bullying and online harassment
I lost the Band-Aid when I was making a Thousand Island salad dressing Diners will be pleased Tim Burton chose to become a film director rather than a chef
Probably a sloth. I can’t picture them running away Southern Rail intern Eddie, 15, put in charge of the company’s Twitter account, responds to a question about the biggest animal he could cling-film to a lamp-post
Niall Ferguson
Kremlin back channels worked just fine for JFK
Sadiq Khan appears to have a bad case of selective memory syndrome, so contagious among politicians. The London mayor damned Wandsworth council last week for allowing developers of Battersea power station to reduce the amount of “affordable housing” there to 9% (prices for the apartments they are building start at £650,000 for a one-bedroom flat). But he made no mention of his own agreement to a development at the old Wimbledon dog track, where the proportion of affordable housing will be . . . 9%. Both well short of the 50% he promised in his election campaign. Maybe he has forgotten that, too.
Why is Donald Trump being roasted for using Kennedy’s tactics?
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t is much worse than you thought. Not only have members of the president’s immediate family been secretly talking to Russia. I can also reveal that the president is a serial philanderer who is compulsively unfaithful to his wife. He suffers from severe medical problems, which he and his staff are concealing from the press. One of his mistresses is also romantically involved with a notorious gangster. Speaking of organised crime, I understand that his campaign to get elected called on the mafia for assistance. He intends to appoint his brother to the key position of attorney-general. They plan to wiretap human rights activists. In foreign policy the story is even worse. He is planning an invasion of a hostile country, which is almost certain to fail disastrously. He has established a confidential back channel which he intends to use in times of crisis to communicate secretly with the Kremlin. Yet he is willing to risk nuclear war. And he has no objection to the assassination of political enemies and coups against allied governments. Yet this same president has the temerity to go to Europe and make speeches about the need to defend “western civilisation”. The president I have just described is not, however, Donald J Trump, but John F Kennedy. This is not “what about-ism” — in other words, I am not trying to excuse the fact that President Trump’s son appears to have colluded (or at least considered colluding) with the Russian government last year. Indeed, I pointed out last October that the Kremlin connection was the biggest problem with Trump’s candidacy. I am merely pointing out that, when it comes to ethical conduct, it is far from clear which of these two presidents was worse. As is now well known, Kennedy had numerous extramarital relationships: one was with Judith Campbell Exner, whose other lovers included the Chicago organised crime boss Sam Giancana. “We’re a bunch of virgins,” grumbled Fred Dutton, secretary of the cabinet, “. . . and he’s like God, f****** anybody he wants to, any time he feels like it.” All this was known to the FBI director, J Edgar Hoover, as well as to Kennedy’s inner circle. But it went entirely unreported in the press. His compulsive infidelity was only one of Kennedy’s many deceptions. Throughout his political career he concealed the severity of his medical problems (he suffered from acute back pain, hypothyroidism and Addison’s disease, for which he needed continual cortisone treatments). As a senator, Kennedy deliberately missed the vote censuring Joseph McCarthy, who
had more than once been a Kennedy house guest. He lied to his own brother about his decision to make Lyndon Johnson his running mate in 1960. His campaign may have called on mafia assistance to defeat Richard Nixon that year. Intervening on behalf of the jailed Martin Luther King Jr had also helped Kennedy win the 1960 election, but that did not stop his brother Bobby — whom Kennedy appointed as attorney-general — authorising wiretaps on King’s phone three years later. In foreign policy Kennedy combined callousness with recklessness. His questionable interventions ranged from an abortive invasion of Cuba to a bloody coup d’état in South Vietnam. On his watch the CIA sought to assassinate Fidel Castro using mafia hitmen. On his watch the Berlin Wall was built, the ugliest symbol of the Cold War division of the world. And on his watch the world came closer than at any other time to nuclear Armageddon. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy himself put the odds of disaster — meaning a thermonuclear war that could have claimed the lives of 100m Americans, more than 100m Russians and comparable millions of Europeans — at “between one out of three and even”. How was catastrophe averted? By using a back channel to the Kremlin to cut a secret deal. Kennedy did this twice: in 1961 over Berlin and again in 1962 over Cuba. It was Bobby who took the crucial meetings with the Russians, unbeknown to key members of the administration, including the vicepresident. The reason the Russians agreed to
Thus far Trump has done nothing to match the skulduggery of his fondly remembered presidential predecessor
remove their missiles from Cuba was that the Kennedy brothers secretly pledged to remove US missiles from Turkey. The details of the deal did not become public until the 1980s. Finally, it was John F Kennedy who, according to the US ambassador in Saigon, authorised the coup that toppled and killed the South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 — a decision that irrevocably committed Washington to the ultimately disastrous war against North Vietnam. Kennedy occupies a unique position in the American collective memory. In a Gallup poll conducted in November 2013, 74% of Americans rated him an outstanding or above-average president, compared with 61% for Ronald Reagan and 49% for Dwight Eisenhower. His reputation is not wholly a result of his assassination on November 22, 1963, greatly though that event continues to fascinate the public. He is still remembered with affection for his good looks as much as for the idealistic rhetoric of his speeches. Yet here is one contemporary verdict on the Kennedy administration, written before the president’s death. It had “demoralised the bureaucracy and much of the military”. It had engaged in “government by improvisation and manipulation”. It had relied on “public relations gimmicks”. It had “no respect for personal dignity” and treated people “as tools”. It had “brutalised our allies within Nato”. It was undermining the US reputation for reliability — “the most important asset any nation has”. The State Department was “a shambles, demoralised by the weakness of the secretary of state and the interference of the White House”. Its foreign policy was “essentially a house of cards”. Thus the young Henry Kissinger. The resemblances between the two presidents are more than superficial. In particular, both were too much inclined to see politics as a family affair. So far, however, Trump has done nothing to match the skulduggery and recklessness of his fondly remembered predecessor. Perhaps Trump’s Cuban Missile Crisis is on its way in North Korea.We shall see. What the Trump presidency has revealed most clearly is not the way the presidency has changed as an institution, but the way the American press has changed. Or maybe not. Perhaps, if JFK had been a Republican, he would have been treated with the same ferocious animosity as DJT is treated today for much less heinous acts. Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford
l Lord Stoddart of Swindon has
gallantly raised the banner on behalf of pensioners by asking the government what the value of the £10 Christmas bonus introduced in 1972 would be today if it had kept pace with average earnings. The answer is, by last year it would have been £202. So if you have been claiming a state pension for, say, 25 years or so, you are justified in feeling a tad aggrieved. Lord Stoddart is 91.
l The Commons Speaker, John
Bercow, may have got it in the neck from tie companies after he ditched the requirement that all male MPs wear one in the chamber. But now Penrose London, which specialises in making men’s luxury accessories, has sent all 442 male MPs one of its woven silk ties. One Conservative, delighted with his gift, said: “I hope the Speaker bans suits in the chamber next. Then perhaps I will have an entire new wardrobe by the end of the year.”
l How do you deal with frontbenchers who yawn during prime minister’s questions? The chancellor, Philip Hammond, stifled a couple of epic ones while the first secretary of state, Damian Green, was standing in for Theresa May last week. Perhaps the former Tory leader Michael Howard could provide some advice. Should Green crack the whip or let it go? “It never happened in my day,” he chuckled. No, Michael: when you spoke they were all asleep already.
l It is always gratifying to see
youngsters with the self-awareness that the rest of us lack. Step forward singer Ed Sheeran. “Who the f*** wants me to sing about politics? I think if I started singing about political issues, people would be like, ‘Pipe down, mate — you’re 26,’ ” he said. You certainly never heard that from the young Bob Dylan.
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
COMMENT
Adam Boulton Backbenchers breathe rebellious life into the zombie parliament
T
he backbenchers’ parliament, as Hilary Benn is calling it, is a better name than the zombie parliament. Theresa May would have settled for the zombies without shedding a little tear. It would have suited her dirigiste tendencies to have MPs meeting as seldom as possible to discuss not very much. As with so much else, circumstances have conspired against the prime minister. She couldn’t send the Commons away for an early break last week because MPs had to be present to host the much postponed Spanish state visit. At least King Felipe and Queen Letizia gave her and Jeremy Corbyn an excuse to send their substitutes to the prime minister’s questions fight club. Parliament will resume briefly in September before the party conferences. MPs are wise not to be away too long in these unsettled times, even though government business managers have ensured that there won’t be a focused debate on the repeal bill, or the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill as it is now called, until well into October. Backbenchers are trying to breathe the life back into parliament in defiance of party discipline. The likes of Labour’s Stephen Kinnock and Chuka Umunna, the Conservative Anna Soubry and Liberal Democrats are already sounding
out colleagues to defy the will of both front benches when they finally get their hands on the Brexit legislation. Parliamentary arithmetic and the ideological hard line taken by both the Conservative and Labour leaderships make independence an attractive choice for individual MPs. In the last parliament the prime minister’s then joint chief of staff Nick Timothy lived in fear of organised rebellion by a dozen Conservative MPs. That number has now fallen to just seven thanks to the election. It only took a show of strength for the Labour backbencher Stella Creasy to confound the Democratic Unionist Party on abortions for Northern Irish women. From Hillsborough to contaminated blood, MPs such as Andy Burnham and Diana Johnson have shown that dedicated campaigning can eventually bring succour to the overlooked. When a government or a prime minister may not last for long there is less incentive to be loyal. May’s political weakness has forced her to cling to the team she already had rather than risk causing a disturbance she might not survive. So junior bag-carriers have stayed in place alongside cabinet ministers she would like to have sacked, such as Philip Hammond and Andrea Leadsom. The fact that a “government of all the
talents” has effectively been imposed on the prime minister shows that she is much less secure within her party than Corbyn is in his. May has split her party further by insisting on inflexible Brexit red lines over the European Court of Justice, the single market, the customs union and freedom of movement of people. Her inability to compromise is likely to be what costs her her job in the end. In both main parties the sharpest division between the leadership and the party concerns Brexit. May and Corbyn are complacent about leaving. The majority of their MPs are panicked. Backbenchers got the chance to express their unease in last week’s elections to the chairs of the departmental select committees. The party that holds each chair is pre-set but it is up to MPs from all parties to chose the person. A clear majority of these paid jobs went to erstwhile “remainers”. There were pointed rebuffs for prominent Brexiteers. Jacob Rees-Mogg was beaten at the Treasury committee by the former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan, an ardent European and scourge of May. Zac Goldsmith was humiliated in his bid to head the environment committee. Some of the biggest names were reelected unopposed, including two of the
There is a yearning for a fresh start. Talent-spotting for new leaders is the most popular game at end-of-term Westminster most obvious alternative leaders should Labour turn from Corbynism: Benn at the Brexit committee and Yvette Cooper at home affairs. A third contender, 38year-old Rachel Reeves, was installed at the business committee. Other chairs, such as Dr Sarah Woolaston at health and Damian Collins at culture, have demonstrated their independence and hard-earned expertise in their fields. Being personable helps: Robert Halfon took
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR WOLFGANG RATTAY
Hard bargain I don’t understand all the fuss about a hard Brexit (“Trump throws May a lifeline with trade deal”, News, last week). With the fall in the value of the pound, if we had to deal under world trade rules our exports to the EU would be about the same as before we voted: devaluation makes our exports 10% cheaper. Kathy Rogerson Catterick, North Yorkshire Continental divide Britain is in a very similar position to 75 years ago:
Hard-left bullies given free rein Reports that Tory parliamentary candidates were intimidated during the election campaign, including some being sent death threats, are deeply disturbing (“Clampdown on MP abuse after death threats on campaign trail”, News, and “Snuggle down on your bed of nails, Blairites: you made it yourselves”, Comment, last week). Despite now appearing to exhibit more gravitas than hitherto, Jeremy Corbyn is still the hard left’s useful idiot, as are the social media lemmings who voted for him on the grounds of a promised public spending splurge while giving an electoral
Migrants can’t go back to Libya Sarah Baxter is right to say that we need an open debate about what is happening in the Mediterranean (“Bill Gates speaks and the tide turns against migrants”, Comment, last week). But the solution to this crisis cannot involve a “European naval
threatened by belligerence from across the Channel. The determination to destroy the UK by economic warfare seems every bit as strong as the intent to destroy it by force of arms during the war. It appears that the EU is no longer a partnership of willing participants but an empire of vassal states, which will be destroyed rather than allowed to leave. Pádraic Neary Tubbercurry, Co Sligo Dangerous 1970s It is not that Jeremy Corbyn offers a return to 1970s Britain. Eastern Europe in the Seventies would come closer (“Young need to learn perils of Labour policies”, Letters, last week). But, as fewer pupils study history, many students are unaware of the dangers of state socialism, and the policies of the USSR conjure up little menace for the modern teenager. Peter Ford Marlborough, Wiltshire Seeing the northern light Many people seem to have swallowed the “Labour is bad” diatribe offered by so much of the media. Maybe
V-sign to the Tories. Aside from its divisive social engineering policies and ruinous spending plans, a Corbyn administration would give free rein to the bullies of the hard left. The damage that would be wreaked both economically and socially if such a government ever came into being should not be underestimated. William Wilson, London SW3
BIRTHDAYS
POINTS
Gareth Bale, footballer, 28, pictured Stewart Copeland, drummer (the Police), 65 Margaret Court, tennis player, 75 Corey Feldman, actor (The Lost Boys), 46 Will Ferrell, actor (Elf), 50 Frank Field, Labour MP, 75 Michael Flatley, dancer, 59 Shirley Hughes, children’s author and illustrator (Alfie Gets in First), 90 Miguel Indurain, cyclist, 53 Tony Kushner, playwright (Angels in America), 61 Johnny Vaughan, radio presenter, 51
Tuition fees gamble In “‘Frankenstein’ tuition fees to be reviewed” (News, last week), Barnaby Lenon, the Independent Schools Council chairman, suggests parents should help their children pay for tuition fees. Given the unknowns, this advice is rather simplistic. Some students won’t ever earn enough to repay the loans, particularly women, who are more likely to work part-time. It has been predicted that about 75% of loans will never be repaid, because after 30 years they will be written off. Why, if the loan will be waived, would you not take it? Parents should instead consider whether it might be better to use any spare funds later to help their children put a deposit on a house. For prospective highearners the situation is more complicated because of the punitive interest rates applied to student loans (RPI plus 3%). Here it might be more cost-effective to pay fees upfront to avoid interest. Suzanne McIvor, Oxford
Theresa May leaves the stage after her G20 welcome last weekend by Angela Merkel “tech-savvy 19-year-olds” are more inspired by Finland and other Nordic countries where Corbyn would be regarded as a moderate, rather than the extremist he is painted as. Austerity has aided the rich. It is this that has pushed people towards Corbyn. How many of those who wrote in last week benefited from having no tuition fees? I did. Is it wrong to want the same for my daughter? Robert Mignot, by email
Balanced view Perhaps being media-savvy is not persuading others by sharing selective content online but recognising bias. I would hope that my children and grandchildren would not have their minds made up by just one article. Caroline Whiting, Newbury Wisdom of youth The young may have more sense than your orrespondents give them
not a word was mentioned about that. Name and address supplied
Charlie’s parents should decide Taxpayers fund the NHS to save lives, so why is it wasting thousands of pounds on trying to end one (“Sometimes it’s better to let a child go”, News Review, last week)? If the parents of Charlie Gard feel treatment in America can offer their child hope, they should be free to try it. The seemingly dogged determination of the NHS to prevent them offers an uneasy and dystopian vision of a future health service. Angus Long Newcastle upon Tyne
Abuse overlooked Diane Abbott has been abused for many years and
Activists in denial Credit to Yvette Cooper for stating in a speech that there was “no excuse for vitriolic abuse against our opponents. During this . . . campaign some Tory women MPs and candidates were targeted with unacceptable personal abuse from the left. And we’ve seen Labour supporters holding placards with the severed head of Theresa May. Maybe it was meant as a joke. It isn’t funny.” Sadly, I doubt her words will be heeded — according to many activists there has been no abuse, no vitriol, no anti-semitism in evidence out on the stump. Pam Nash, London SE15
flotilla” that will send people back to Libya. On a recent visit to Libya I saw first hand how dangerous the situation is there. Refugees and migrants risk being picked off the streets and thrown into overcrowded, dirty and inhumane detention centres. They are not told why they are detained, where they are or what will happen next. Our doctors see seriously
malnourished adults, widespread scabies, wounds and worse. Many people found on boats in the Mediterranean tell of abuse they received in captivity and the risk of forced labour. Those taken back to Libya end up in these very conditions. By shutting down legal avenues of escape, we force people into illegal ones. And in the
shadows, the human traffickers thrive. Vickie Hawkins Executive Director, MSF UK. Full letter online
Beastly behaviour I suppose “mutton-headed old mugwump” — Boris Johnson’s attack on Corbyn during the general election campaign — doesn’t count as insulting? Richard Jones, Kuala Lumpur
including Priti Patel, Bim Afolami, Preet Gill, Rishi Sunak, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Penny Mordaunt. Ahead of them there is a cohort of nearly-men, one or two heaves from the top. But there is a growing feeling that they may have missed their chance. Reportedly the main job of one of Boris Johnson’s special advisers is to put a name to any impressive younger Conservative performers he spots on parliamentlive.tv. Neither party has a leadership selection process that fully suits the times. Mayors Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham both have their eyes on Labour’s top job and the Tories would love a chance to get their Scottish leader Ruth Davidson onto the ballot. For now the rules says the leader must be an MP, so newspaper editor George Osborne is out too. The two leaders who set the tone of the recent past, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, were both imperial prime ministers who commanded healthy majorities for good or ill. Today’s government is “dead in the water”, to quote Andrew Mitchell, one of its backbenchers. Labour’s leadership is paralysed in an ideological stand-off. But backbenchers are not the walking dead. They are becoming the beating heart of Britain’s turbulent politics. @AdamBoultonSky
The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF Email: letters@sunday-times.co.uk Fax: 020 7782 5454
Repeal bill’s sovereign remedy to unite country I would have thought that even people who voted to stay in the EU would support the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act and welcome the return of legal sovereignty to the UK (“Brexit 2: now it’s Repeal Bill war”, News, last week). Currently British law has to adopt EU law, which is formulated by the unelected European Commission. Any student of history will tell you that giving away your authority to an unaccountable third party always ends badly. Paul Savage, Cheltenham
the vacant education committee chair just days after being sacked as a minster. “Crispin’s problem is that he just goes around being rude to people,” was one Tory grandee’s verdict on the former minister Crispin Blunt’s shock defeat at the foreign affairs committee by Tom Tugendhat, who only became an MP two years ago. There was more to it than that. The next generation of MPs, comprising those elected since 2010 and mostly under 45, is in the majority in the Commons now and is beginning to feel its strength. Brexit probably means that the next Conservative leader and thus prime minister will be one of the old lags tasked with extracting the nation from the quagmire they’ve led it into. Corbyn, 68, is unmovable for now. But that will only be for a transition phase. There is a widespread yearning for a fresh start soon. Talent-spotting for new leaders is the most popular game at end-of-term Westminster. Almost everyone has a list of favourite candidates. Unlike May, though quite possibly because he has a small field of loyalists to choose from, Corbyn is putting forward most of his shadow cabinet as potential successors. There are more women and ethnic minority MPs than ever before, many seen as possible future party leaders,
Doctors know best I am sure the staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital are compassionate but they are
Family planning solution Interesting that the most migrants are from Nigeria, set to become the third most populated country on the planet. Melinda Gates was in London promoting the right
credit for. They may see that Scotland does not have university fees and has not yet gone bankrupt. They have also been told that large personal debts are not a problem, so why are they a problem for the government? Plus, the economic crash of 2008, caused by the bankers, resulted in more pain for the ordinary person than anything that happened in the 1970s. Bob Clay, Kettering
also the medical experts who are able to look at the outlook for this baby and judge what decisions are in his best interests. Suzanne Wilson Windermere, Cumbria We let our baby go I have great sympathy for these agonised parents. We had to let our first baby go. We searched the world, before the internet — by post — to find a “cure”. There was none, so we resolved to make this little adored baby as happy as possible — if he woke in the night and wanted fun, so be it. Later we sat with him, and held him, until he left us. I was 35, desolate beyond measure, but sometimes death is the best healing. Name and address supplied
for all women to have access to family planning last week. When will we realise that the tide of people attempting to cross to Europe would be eased if the need for family planning were met, helping to break the cycle of poverty and dependency on aid. Robin Witt, Community Health and Sustainable Environment (Chase) Africa, Frome, Somerset
Footballer Gareth Bale is 28
ANNIVERSARIES 1377 Richard of Bordeaux crowned Richard II of England 1557 Anne of Cleves, fourth wife of Henry VIII, dies 1872 Polar explorer Roald Amundsen born 1911 Dancer Ginger Rogers born 1945 Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin meet at Potsdam to decide postwar future of Germany 1955 Stirling Moss becomes first Briton to win British Grand Prix, at Aintree racing circuit, Merseyside 1969 Apollo 11 takes off on its mission to land men on the moon, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin 1993 Stella Rimington becomes first head of MI5 to pose for press photographs
Go further An average student may leave university £50,000 in debt but I wish you had also mentioned that an average further education student has no debt and few costs (“Reform tuition fees, don’t abolish them”, Editorial, last week). And the state spends less than £5,000 per head on such students. Considering that almost all get productive jobs, further education does go further. But further and vocational education are the Cinderellas of education. Deep Sagar, chairman of governing body, South Eastern Regional College, Lisburn Student crisis Mental health issues among young people are alarmingly widespread (“‘Stressed’ students in stampede for help with exams”, News, last week). More professional support is called for, and research into why it is happening. Students affected need special exam arrangements so they can perform to the best of their ability. To imply that they are simply not “getting on with it” is not only insulting to
those supporting them but also shows how little some people in senior positions in universities understand the crisis we are facing. Jane Cheng, Birmingham Give me a break As a university invigilator I am amazed by the number of students given alternative arrangements, or “alts”, to allow them extra time, rest breaks and all manner of other concessions during exams. The university’s choice is simple: allow the alts or suffer the wrath of the PC police. Most invigilators I know question how these graduates of the future will fare in the workplace. Jack Raymond, Nottingham Yummy school dinners Had it not been for my (free) 1950s school dinners, I doubt I would be here (“Gravy training — top chefs to back school for dinner ladies”, News, last week). Ours were cooked from scratch: meat or fish and three veg, followed by pudding. As you reported, it is the quality of the cook that matters. I later worked in a primary school and the food was abysmal but, to be fair, the cook had to manage on 46p per head a meal. Ros Ashworth, by email Now we’re cooking As a specialist school contract caterer I wish to advise that all schools follow government nutritional guidelines as part of the School Food Plan introduced in 2014. One of the missions of the plan was to empower school caterers to dispel the myth that school cooks are merely “dinner ladies” who cannot cook. Most school caterers now also work within the Food for Life framework, which ensures that more than 75% of the menu is freshly cooked. Paul Rogers, managing director, the AiP group of companies Letters should arrive by midday on Thursday and include the full address and a daytime and an evening phone number. Please quote date, section and page number. We may edit letters, which must be exclusive to The Sunday Times
CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS Complaints about inaccuracies in all sections of The Sunday Times should be addressed to complaints@ sunday-times.co.uk or Complaints, The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF. In addition,
the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) will examine formal complaints about the editorial content of UK newspapers and magazines. Please go to our website for full details of how to lodge a complaint.
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NEWS REVIEW MARGARETTE DRISCOLL
L
ast Tuesday, a few hours after Theresa May made her surprise announcement of an official investigation into the contaminated blood scandal that has seen some 2,400 people die, a text pinged in from an old boyfriend. “Well done, your work years ago has brought about an inquiry!” it read. In 1989, the year I joined The Sunday Times — and when he and I were an item — the newspaper launched a powerful campaign for compensation for the victims of what May now describes as “an appalling tragedy that should simply never have happened”. Thousands of people, through NHS blundering or negligence — we will eventually know which — were treated with blood products contaminated with hepatitis C and HIV during the 1970s and 1980s. Haemophiliacs whose lives depended on the blood-clotting agent factor VIII were accidentally infused with HIV, which would go on to cause fullblown Aids, a death sentence, as there was then no treatment. We now know that many thousands of others were infected with hepatitis C, a devastating virus that attacks the liver, through contaminated blood transfusions during operations or childbirth. In 1989 the impetus seemed to be to sweep the problem under the carpet. A limited number of victims, 1,200 haemophiliacs, had been identified and given small, ex-gratia payments to keep them from suing. No proper compensation had been paid and no organisation or individual called to account. The Sunday Times thought that was a scandal and took up arms on their behalf. I was paired up with the investigative reporter John Davison, a rugged northerner who has since become a boatbuilder. We set to work, with John combing through medical research and grilling government officials, and me highlighting the horror of the victims’ plight. Frank Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead, was already alert to the issue and pressing for action: “Not for the first time I felt one had to go outside parliament to find a champion,” he says. “That was The Sunday Times.” The first person I spoke to was Allen White, a 36-year-old computer systems designer whose story foretold many to come. Allen was a haemophiliac, with two young daughters, who had contracted HIV from factor VIII. Haemophiliacs lack a natural blood-clotting agent, so even slight injuries can result in serious, sometimes fatal blood loss. When factor VIII, which is derived from blood, was introduced in the 1970s, haemophiliacs were delighted because rather than endless visits to hospital, they could treat themselves at home with simple injections. What Allen and his fellow sufferers did not know was that Britain lacked the capacity to be self-sufficient in blood products, so much of our factor VIII was imported from America. Across the Atlantic blood donations were paid for: the money attracted drug addicts and prostitutes, who were at high risk of infection from HIV and strains of hepatitis. Blood was also taken from prisoners. Allen was given 18 months to live when he was diagnosed with Aids, and already a year had gone by. He was suffering regular night sweats, so severe that if his wife made him a comforting cup of tea she had to hold it to his lips because his hands shook so much. “I try not to be morbid but every time I pick up a new bug I think, ‘Will this be the one?’” he told me almost 30 years ago. “Just now, I am as ill as I have ever been . . . I have to come to terms with the fact that I don’t know how long I have got.” Allen was on my mind as I called my old boyfriend to thank him for his text. Inevitably, the conversation turned to that time, when the horror of what had happened was becoming clear. I mentioned some of the victims but he no longer recognised the names. “I just remember the funerals,” he said. The people John and I were writing about were dying at a rate of one a week: one for every story that ran in the paper as part of our campaign. It truly felt as if a curse had fallen on them. The suffering was worsened by the stigma attached to HIV and Aids at the time. Despite
PLUCKING CHILDREN FROM THE KILLING ZONE
The ‘Angel of Mostar’ has spent 25 years rescuing families from war. Her mission to Mosul has been the most harrowing, she tells Christina Lamb
M
Diana, Princess of Wales shaking hands with an Aids patient in 1987 (to reassure people that the virus could not be transmitted by touch), widespread ignorance and brutality was alive and well in the late 1980s. Last week Janet Smith, whose sevenyear-old son Colin died of Aids in 1990, recalled her husband outside their house in Newport, Gwent, one night at 2am trying to clean up after someone daubed “Aids dead” on it. “We were persecuted, really, but that’s how it was in that day,” she said. Around the same time, a four-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with HIV was refused entry to a play group. Jane Dorey’s husband Paul had already died from Aids when we got in touch. In his final days, just before Christmas 1988, they had initially told people he had cancer. However, having joined a legal action on Paul’s behalf, Jane wanted to tell the truth: “I had to watch my husband die and I want to do anything I can to ease the pain of people who have to go through the same thing,” she said. Doubts about blood products had been floating below the radar for years. As early as 1959, researchers were warning of a risk of passing on hepatitis through contamination. In 1974 an article in The Lancet said the rate of infection for one strain of hepatitis was 10 times higher using commercial blood. The following year the journal suggested commercially produced factor VIII should be used only in emergencies. By 1976, David Owen, a junior health minister, was promising Britain, which could produce only 70% of the factor VIII it needed, would become self-sufficient within “a couple of years”. Owen (now Lord Owen) later said he suspected there had been serious maladministration on the part of the Department of Health.“I saw him recently and he said it was the decision that had most haunted him, not getting our own independent supply,” says Field. Insult was added to injury by the meagre amounts available from the Macfarlane Trust fund, set up in 1988. Small grants could be paid out for “necessities”, such as washing machines, and it paid a maximum weekly allowance of £25. Everything had to be asked for. Sue Threakall, whose husband Bob had Aids (and died in 1991) told me then she felt humiliated: “Other people might consider a dishwasher a luxury but to me it’s a necessity because it means I can have 20 minutes a day extra to spend with my husband rather than standing at the sink. Why should you have to justify to anyone that you need a washing machine or a freezer? It should be our decision.” Though many were dying, the victims were forced to launch a legal action if they were to get proper compensation. Rosemary Collins, our news editor, was from New Zealand, where a no-fault compensation system was in place to assist victims of medical and other accidents, without them having to prove negligence. Her conviction that the government had not just a legal but a moral duty to support the victims became a key theme of the campaign. Within weeks of our launch, Field had galvanised 200 MPs to write to The Sunday Times in support. Many also wrote to Kenneth Clarke, the secretary of state for health. Clarke’s view was that the haemophiliacs had insufficient evidence to win a case in court, but as the weeks wore on, the adverse publicity began to rattle the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. She agreed to meet a group of senior Conservatives who were lobbying on behalf of infected constituents. Speaking on the subject in the Commons in November 1989, Patrick Cormack, MP for South Staffordshire (who now sits in the Lords), said: “The campaign will go on and we shall not go away. The Sunday Times will continue its thundering and we shall continue our thundering.” A few days later, Clarke announced a £19m top-up to the Macfarlane Trust, intended to provide a grant of £20,000 to each victim or family. It was a significant, but partial victory. In fact the cost of the grants would be £24m, so the £5m shortfall had to be found from the trust’s existing funds, which were earmarked for other things. “It would be churlish to argue that £19m is unwelcome . . . [but] the quality of the government’s mercy is so strained as to be morally reprehensible,” The Sunday Times declared. “It is a further example of the cynicism and lack of principle that has pervaded this tragic affair.” It would take another year of heartrending stories and painstaking piecing together of who-knew-what-when, plus the intervention of the High Court judge
ost working mothers have been in the situation where their child needs help at an inconvenient moment. When Sally Becker’s arachnophobe daughter texted her earlier this month with a photograph of a spider in her bedroom, begging to know what to do, Becker was crouching in a garage in west Mosul with gunfire going on all around. “We weren’t even supposed to have phones on because of the light,” she says. “Isis fighters were three streets away.” It was the final stages of the nine-month battle for Mosul. The spiky-haired single mother who lives in Brighton had spent the previous fortnight braving gun battles and chemical attacks as she, a Kurdish driver and a 75-year-old Italian doctor, travelled in an old ambulance through the rubble, rescuing children and families from inside the devastated Old City in temperatures of 50C.
They were dying at the rate of one a week. As an inquiry is finally ordered into how, a generation ago,, the NHS gave infected blood products to thousands of people, the Sunday Times reporter who exposed thee full scale of suffering recalls the agony of the victimss
DRIP BY DRIP
A BLOOD SCANDAL UNFOLDS MINISTERS STARTED TO STONEWALL. WE HAD TO KNOCK THEM OFF THEIR PERCH FRANK FIELD
As they drove, they watched mothers and children emerging from the rubble, some stick-thin after months under siege, others with injuries from mortars and shrapnel. “We were going into areas which had just been liberated, where people hadn’t seen a doctor for a year. We were literally treating sick kids from the back of an ambulance,” she says. “Sometimes it was just handing out paracetamol and antibiotics. If they were particularly sick we took them to the nearest hospital.” In two weeks her team rescued about 260 people, including 43 injured women and children who were treated at a makeshift trauma clinic. Becker, 56, is no stranger to danger or unorthodox methods. She first made headlines in Bosnia in 1993 when she became known as “the Angel of Mostar” for her work driving an old Bedford ambulance across the front
lines, braving sniper fire to rescue children under Croatian attack. Later she returned with a convoy to rescue 150 more and airlifted 55 wounded children and mothers from central Bosnia. Then it all started going wrong. Becker had no medical training — her only qualifications are A-levels in English and art and her previous job was as an extra in a failed BBC soap. She was accused of recklessly endangering the lives of other volunteers in the convoy for self-publicity. In Kosovo a few years later she was imprisoned for trying to smuggle out refugees and had one of her vehicles hijacked and in Albania in 1998 she was shot in the right leg. Jack Straw, then home secretary, refused visas to refugees from Kosovo who Becker wanted to bring to Britain, saying she had gone against government advice. She was undeterred, despite ending up pregnant
As with so many campaigns, the revelation that haemophiliacs were being poisoned by faulty blood products came from a family visiting my constituency surgery. Twins and a son had been fed poisonous blood products. The immediate issue was of benefit entitlement as their haemophilia marched towards yet more serious illnesses. I was puzzled. I then believed we had the best health service in the world and couldn’t understand how this tragedy was unfolding in the lives of my constituents. I wrote about the problem in The Sunday Times and my involvement in the campaign took off. I half-suspected a genuine
mistake until the Conservative government began to stonewall in the Commons. The Sunday Times then became the most important platform there was to knock the government off its perch. A government’s resolve can collapse at a moment’s notice. Feelers were put out to the Haemophilia Society, which was the basis of the campaign, on an offer to settle. It was a miserly amount for what we already then knew was a killing mistake by the NHS. The society came under huge pressure. The offer had to be taken then and there. If it wasn’t, it would be withdrawn and no new offer would be made. As with all injustices, the issue did not go away. Many
AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
Fighting between Isis and the Iraqi army has devastated Mosul’s Old City.
Hundreds of children are said to be still stranded in the ruins
haemophiliacs died but their grievances remain and have been regularly pressed in the Commons s. by Diana Johnson and others. A key question for the inquiry must be: when did e the NHS first know that these blood products from America could have deadly infections in them? to The inquiry has to take into account too when would it first have been possible to screen the products and likewise why was there such a balls-up in the execution of building our own secure supply based on people freely giving blood in this country. There’s one big lesson now for the future, apart from having a prime minister who will set up inquiries when everyone before her has kept
the door firmly closed. After the London Tube and bus bombings in 2005, I proposed a national insurance scheme that would, as much as possible, undo the financial damage people suffer following such disasters. The Commons library costed this at an estimated few pennies a year on all our national insurance contributions contributions, both to settle these past injustices and to build up a fund for those events in this disasterprone world that will engulf us from time to time. The scheme is ready for the government to pick up. It can do so even before the public inquiry gets under way. Frank Field is the Labour MP for Birkenhead
after a war romance straight out of Hemingway with a British Army major who rescued her and tended her shot leg, cutting out infected tissue with his knife to stop gangrene. Becker keeps the bullet engraved with the words “Forget Me Not” but Major Bill Foxton turned out to have a wife back home. Since then she has carried out similar rescue missions in Iraq, Chechnya, Gaza and Lebanon, funding them by giving talks. She has also had battles of her own. In 2009 her daughter Billie turned on the television news to see that her father, Foxton, had taken his life after losing his savings in the Bernie Madoff scandal. “We’d always hoped we’d be reunited one day,” says Becker. Then in 2013 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. The following year, as she recovered, she was horrified by the plight of Iraq’s Yazidis, driven out of their homes by Isis fighters, their men killed
and women captured. When she was contacted by someone who was linked to the spiritual leader of the Yazidis asking for help in getting specialist medical treatment abroad for those who needed it, she set off for northern Iraq. In the refugee camps she teamed up with a retired Italian paediatrician, Dr Marino Andolina, and they managed to get three badly injured children to America for treatment and others to Italy. Then the battle for Mosul started and Becker’s team began heading to the edge of the city in March to get people out. “I assured my daughter that would be it but the battle didn’t end,” she recalls. As the fighting to drive out Isis intensified, she returned to the city nine times. “I was almost commuting from Brighton,” she laughs. She went home because her daughter was taking her A-levels.
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
JEREMY YOUNG/MARK ELLIDGE
Allen White developed Aids as a result of contaminated blood
Jane Dorey with daughter Sarah: her husband died at Christmas 1988
Blood was donated by prostitutes, drug addicts and prisoners
How The Sunday Times covered the controversy
Colin Smith was seven when he died. His mother spoke of persecution
Anita Roddick of the Body Shop contracted hepatitis from a transfusion Becker insists that she had not expected the mission to be so dangerous. “I thought I’d be taking people out of the city, not going in,” she says. “But when I realised kids were trapped I had no choice. It’s what I’ve been doing for 25 years.” Every morning they drove to the mustering point, less than half a mile from the front line: “Men, women and children would arrive there exhausted, unable to go on, and we would go back and forth ferrying them to a safe area.” But as the fighting intensified inside the Old City, the injured there could not get out. “So three weeks ago we decided we would go right in as that was the only way,” says Becker. “No other aid organisations could go because of their rules. We were the only civilian ambulance going in.” Every day from 8am to 7pm they drove from street to street looking for people, then taking them to a field
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF SALLY BECKER
Becker in Mosul: ‘I’m more scared every time’
clinic operated by the Iraqi army 9th Division. “We acted like a taxi service half the time but that’s what people needed,” she says. Among the wounded children they found a girl aged six. “Her family had presumably been killed, as she was on her own. She asked for milk but wasn’t allowed to drink as they might need to operate to remove some shrapnel,” says Becker. “My driver brought her a can of formula milk we kept for babies and placed it by her pillow, explaining that she could have it later. After a while they came to transport her and the other children to hospital and she looked at him and asked, ‘Who will make the milk for me?’” Everything Becker did, she insists, was with the support of the Iraqi army: “People who accused me in Mostar didn’t realise what I was doing. They thought I was dashing across a front line on a whim. It wasn’t like that at all. I built up relations with
overseeing the case of several patients who were demanding compensation from the government, to get a satisfactory outcome. In November 1990 we obtained a letter sent by Mr Justice Ognall, urging lawyers on both sides to give “anxious consideration” to settling the issue. In essence, the government should pay up before the claimants died. Around the same time, Thatcher was ousted. We were told privately that the new prime minister, John Major, was keen to get the issue off the table. Clarke was replaced as health secretary by the more emollient William Waldegrave and, shortly afterwards, the government agreed an out-of-court settlement of £42m. In the summer of 1990, John and I were commended in the British Press Awards as campaigning journalists of the year for our work on the tainted blood scandal. But it seemed the issue would literally die away as the haemophiliacs succumbed. We could not have imagined that contaminated blood would be at the top of the political agenda 27 years later, nor that hepatitis C would take over from HIV as the principal infection. Some 7,000 people are estimated to have hepatitis C now, but no one really knows the number because symptoms often do not appear for 20 or 30 years and are sometimes ascribed to other ailments. Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, died in 2007 after contracting hepatitis C from a 1971 transfusion. Just as with the settlement in 1990, an element of political instability has led to the current inquiry. Diana Johnson, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, has been campaigning on the issue since she met Glenn Wilkinson, one of her constituents, in 2010. Wilkinson, 52, a former engineer, is a mild haemophiliac who was given factor VIII in 1983 to prevent excessive bleeding when he had a tooth removed in hospital. He discovered he was infected with hepatitis C in 1995, when it showed up on blood tests for an unrelated illness. “The hospital rang and said the doctor wanted to talk to me so I popped in one lunchtime,” he says. “I’d never heard of hepatitis C. I was told it would attack my liver, causing cirrhosis and maybe cancer and that I might need a transplant. I was devastated, frightened.” Johnson was horrified by Wilkinson’s story. “Then I discovered that thousands of people had been infected and died and
the Croat army. I worked with the UN.” Of all the conflicts she has been involved in, she says what she has seen in the past few weeks has been the most shocking: “I saw Grozny after the Russians flattened [Freedom] Square and I had never seen anything like that before. But the destruction in Mosul made that look like nothing.” It was also a far harder mission: “There were mortars, drones, snipers, mines, everything I’ve ever encountered all in one place. People think you get immune but now I’m more scared every time. Maybe as you get older you become more aware of your own mortality.” They slept in an abandoned car repair workshop that was being used by a German aid organisation. There was constant shooting outside. One night a drone circled overhead. “Someone told us it was an Isis drone looking for foreigners,” she says. “My
A wounded child is treated at a field clinic in Mosul. Some
residents had not been able to see a doctor for a year
that this hadn’t ever been properly investigated.” She has been chipping away at it ever since. In 2015, following the Penrose report into contaminated blood products in Scotland (which many victims denounced as a whitewash), David Cameron apologised to those who were infected by HIV and hepatitis C. In April, as he left the Commons, the former health secretary Andy Burnham declared there had been a “criminal cover-up on an industrial scale in the NHS” over contaminated blood and called for a Hillsborough-style inquiry. As Theresa May had set up the Hillsborough inquiry when she was home secretary, Johnson was hopeful she would do the same as prime minister for contaminated blood. May refused. Johnson requested an urgent Commons debate, which was due to be held on Tuesday. She then had an inspired idea: getting all six leaders of the opposition parties — including the DUP — to sign a letter to May asking for an inquiry. Given the post-election parliamentary arithmetic, the government was bound to take notice, but even Johnson was not optimistic. “I’d written my speech on the basis they were going to refuse again then I got a message to say the government was about to cave in. You could have knocked me over with a feather,” she says. Now the question is what kind of inquiry this will be: will it have teeth, be able to compel witnesses and demand documentary evidence? If it does, one generation later, we may all learn the truth about what happened.
greatest nightmare was to be captured by Isis and for my daughter to see such a thing.” One afternoon that nightmare came frighteningly close. An Iraqi brigadier who had been shot in the neck had been brought in to the trauma point: “Suddenly all hell broke loose. Around 40 Isis fighters had popped up three streets away. The two houses opposite were on fire and we could see all this black smoke.” She wrote farewell messages to her mother and daughter and emailed them to a friend in case the worst happened. That was when she got the text about the spider. “Spider in the bedroom there and Isis round the corner here,” she laughs. Finally the gunfire ceased and the sun came up. Later the army brought in a digger and built a wall of rocks topped with razor wire around the garage to prevent car bombs from penetrating the area.
That wasn’t all. One day, exhausted after carrying out 12 or 13 missions, they saw a cloud of dust and no vehicle. “I thought, how odd. The next thing I knew, my eyes were streaming,” says Becker. “The driver shouted that we should leave, but there were still a couple of families, so I said, ‘We can’t leave them.’ We grabbed them. By the time we got back I couldn’t see and my chest was hurting.” Back at the clinic they were told it was a chlorine gas attack. “For two or three days it felt like sand in my eyes,” she says. When Mosul finally fell last Sunday, Becker was travelling back to Brighton. Andolina is still in Mosul and estimates there are about 2,000 children stranded in the Old City. Becker will see Billie off to university but she is already planning her next mission, this time into Syria. @christinalamb www.roadtopeace.org.uk
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS REVIEW
OUT OF POWER, NOT OUT OF STEAM: JUMPIN’ JOCK FLASH GOES SHOWBIZ
TOM STOCKILL, WITH THANKS TO WWW.LEICESTERSQUARETHEATRE.COM
Any chance of drying up on stage? ‘None .’ What about hecklers? ‘Bring ’em on’
Interview Laura Pullman meets Alex Salmond
M
oments after Andy Murray crashes out of Wimbledon, Alex Salmond professes himself to be “gutted”. Although in truth and despite recently crashing out of Westminster himself, he seems anything but. My own scruffy plimsolls encourage him to whip off his tie and undo a few buttons. And as the former first minister tucks into a large glass of pinot grigio, it dawns on me that this is not Alex Salmond, this is Alex Salmond Unleashed. Which, funnily enough, is the name of his upcoming show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Why the stage? “Well, obviously I was at a loose end,” he deadpans, adding that he has never been “a moper”. After becoming the Scottish National Party’s biggest scalp on June 8 and free of political office for the first time since 1987, I wonder how unleashed he’s feeling. “Quite a bit,” he giggles. “Friends and enemies take note.” Indeed, within minutes of meeting in the naff Park Plaza Hotel Waterloo, Salmond, 62, is practically salivating at the idea of spilling behind-the-scenes beans. “When you’re in office you can’t [tell those stories], when you’re out of office you can. I am out of office, so I will. I can therefore I am,” he says with a pompous flourish. Frustratingly, what he will not do or cannot do is give a sneaky taste of his show’s goodies. Running for 15 days, each performance will cover a different topic — Scottish independence (laugh a minute), showbiz, sport and so on. Predictably, Donald Trump, who
unsuccessfully sued the Scottish government (over an offshore wind farm), is in the firing line. Envisaging the president’s reaction, Salmond says: “He would have apoplexy. If we get a cruise missile up the jacksie, that’ll be the Donald.” Even after decades in the limelight, presumably a first-time Fringe performance is still daunting? Salmond shakes his enormous head. It’s quite galling that he is utterly unfazed, I tell him. “OK, I’m really worried about it, I’m on tenterhooks. I will be so nervous before each show, but that will allow me to give the greatest performance,” he says in a sarky X Factor contestant voice. Special guests won’t be revealed until they walk on stage, but they are “sensational and some of them aren’t in my immediate family”. Ba-dum-ching! Any chance of drying up on stage? “None whatsoever.” What about hecklers? “Bring ’em on.” Anxious about bad reviews? “I will be keeping journalists out.” Ba-da-boom! Did anyone turn down the offer of being a “special guest”? “Look, Balmoral to Edinburgh is not a long way,” he says, then quickly clarifies that this was a joke. Having previously earned more than £70,000 as an Aberdeenshire MP, how much will he make in his new incarnation? “Well, it’s a bit like footballers, cloaked in a veil of secrecy,” he stage whispers over the dire lobby music. “And the great thing is, after 30 years of being an MP, I don’t have to tell you.” Can I guess? “Well you can, but I’ll lie. Isn’t it liberating?” One person feeling less liberated of late is Salmond’s wife of 36 years, Moira. Salmond admits she’s finding it “infuriating” that he is spending so much more
Alex Salmond tries out the stage of the Leicester Square Theatre for size: the former leader of the Scottish Nationalists is looking forward to swapping politics for drama proper
time at their home (a converted mill in Strichen, Aberdeenshire). It seems that they bicker about housework only because he dodges both boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs. Everything, that is, except a good hoover (“I get a grim satisfaction from it”) and he has found “a new talent” with the ice cream maker. I’m impressed. What flavours can he whip
up? “To be fair, Moira makes the ice cream, I just press the button.” A recent raspberry ripple disaster still haunts: “The timing of the ripple injection is key.” When I broach how they’ll celebrate Moira’s 80th birthday next month, there’s an icy reply: “Same way we celebrate any birthdays.” Although he later tells me how his wife “greatly approves of
the first lady of France”. (The Macrons’ 24-year age gap trumps the Salmonds’ 17-year difference.) Any celebrations involving lots of grub are off the menu: Salmond is on a strict diet before treading the boards. “I am on the 5:2 again. I lost four stone before the referendum in 2014,” he says. He put all that weight back on, however, and, it’s fair to say, currently has a serious stomach on him. One week into the new regime, he goes in for a second glass of the pinot but hardly touches the buttery popcorn in front of us. What’s your weakness? “Everything. I’ve got weaknesses all over the place,” he says, before talk turns to Tunnock’s teacakes. Despite a recent chest problem, Salmond insists he’s in good health. It wasn’t always so: as a young boy his terrible asthma meant he was “more off school than at school”. He partly credits his confidence to having been a sickly child, explaining how he acted more extroverted as a defence mechanism. Childhood reminiscing leads to lengthy praise about his late mother, Mary. He tells how she packed her “wee boy wheezing away” off to school without betraying how terrified she was; and how she took him to Girl Guide camps “until I started to enjoy them”. Salmond’s father, Robert, died last month aged 95: “The difficulty was that my dad died in the last week of the election.” He’d have been “tickled pink” that his postal vote was counted, says Salmond, but “absolutely furious to have been bowled out in the mid-nineties”. After the past month it’s clear that Salmond is looking forward, not back. “There are things very much in the offing for after the festival,” he says enigmatically. He artfully dodges whether he’s keen for an Ed Balls-style Strictly Come Dancing reinvention by interrupting that he and Balls were together hours earlier. Practising dance moves? Er, no. “We’re on the Holocaust Memorial Foundation board together.” Another option is upping his radio work. Did he hear Ed Miliband discussing loo flushes on Radio 2 recently? “I only heard the clunky handover to Iain Duncan Smith.” Kirsty Young, on the other hand, sends him into a trance as he gushes about her “amazing blue eyes” and how “spectacularly lovely” she is. Jacob Rees-Mogg also comes in for praise: “I love Jacob. To provide everyone with a living glimpse of the 18th century, I think he does a wonderful job.” Staying firmly away from indyref2, Salmond is a delight. He muses on everything from Pluto’s revoked planetary status to the time he saw a nude production of Hamlet at the Fringe. He pokes fun at himself, describing the 2014 independence referendum as “a minor setback”, and attempts a David Cameron as Bertie Wooster impression. He’s keeping his cards close to his chest, but Salmond has a spring in his step. I’m putting £100 on him as this year’s Strictly underdog. Alex Salmond Unleashed, August 13-27, Assembly Rooms. assemblyfestival.com
LOVE ISLAND IS A MOTHER’S IDEA OF HELL BUT CATNIP TO HER TEENAGE KIDS The summer’s hit TV show has opened up a generational chasm in Rosie Millard’s household
I am watching a TV contest in which women in teensy bikinis are holding trays of hot dogs. About 10 yards away, men in budgiesmuggler trunks are spraying tomato ketchup at them. The couple with the most ketchup-drenched woman wins. It is truly jaw-dropping. Yep, this is Love Island, the must-see show of the summer for those of a certain age. Most people over 40 find it unbearable. Everyone under 20 thinks it is unmissable. Six nights a week 2m people tune in to witness the Ken doll boy contestants “sticking it on” (the Love Island lingo for flirting with) the Barbie girl contestants as they hook up, break up and recouple repetitively. After almost two months cooped up in a “luxurious” Mallorca villa, the couples face a public vote for a £50,000 prize. Clips of this dross are circulated ad nauseam on every possible social media site. For die-hard fans there’s a spin-off weekly show called Love Island Aftersun. To my slight despair, my three eldest children think
ITV
and talk about nothing else. The show leaves my younger son, 12, cold. But that is because it is about one thing — or two, if you treat “sex” and “fancying” as different things. Is it the best reality show yet? Yes, according to his older brother and two older sisters, because it is pared down to the essence of life. “It’s like Big Brother, but with just the bits that everyone cares about,” says Phoebe, 19. “Romance and who fancies whom.” But it’s so glossily ghastly, with its sausage-smuggling, pole-dancing, fellatiomimicking vulgarity. “It’s
extremely entertaining,” retorts my daughter. “It’s much more accessible than Big Brother, and it’s not malicious. It is kid-friendly.” Is she serious? With gags about baps and sausages? Come off it — they’re jokes, say my children. On a “nudgenudge, wink-wink, say no more” level. “Everyone is interested in sex and people getting off with other people,” says Phoebe. But she is a member of FemSoc at university! Love Island, with its perfectly proportioned women in Gstring bikinis and false eyelashes is about as liberating in terms of sexual
Love Island: ‘Everyone is interested in sex and people getting off with other people’ politics as The Handmaid’s Tale. And it’s real! Oh, get over yourself, Mumsy. “The women in it have agency. They are not controlled by the men. It is sexist, but for both parties,” Phoebe suggests. “It objectifies men as well as women. Basically, if you are a woman, you have to have a flat stomach and massive tits. If you are a man, you have to be hairless and ripped. It’s
not unfair because it’s equal. I agree this could make young people feel insecure about their bodies, but it is gripping and dramatic. And look at the naked male obstacle course!” Must I? I imagine the ITV2 execs are delirious over the show’s success. Witness the view from my eldest daughter. “After the first two episodes I knew that every single person was watching it, and you would miss out if you didn’t. It is engrossing.” Her younger sister, Honey, 14, echoes the sentiment. “Basically, you get to talk about it with your friends.” What is true is that in an
age when we usually bingewatch TV at our own leisure, Love Island fans typically tune in every night at 9pm, so last night’s drama can be discussed around the metaphorical water-cooler the following day. And it must be noted that the programme is produced to a tight formula. “The women are completely taken out of context,” Phoebe says. “Amber is a dancer and Camilla works in bomb disposal. Montana is a student. They are brought into an environment simply to talk about who they fancy. And they are doing it for one reason: to win £50,000.”
According to this opinion poll, carried out exclusively among my offspring, Love Island is excellent for three reasons: a) it’s a laugh, b) it’s a bonding experience between siblings and friends and c) the characters are real and straightforward. “They are normal people, and I feel like I know them,” Phoebe says. What about the hoary old notion of public service broadcasting, which, when I last looked, ITV2 had signed itself up for? As far as my children are concerned, Love Island is a perfect exemplar of Lord Reith’s triumvirate: inform, educate, entertain.
Well, the last bit at least. You have the ITV News at 10 to mop up the other two. “What they are doing is just silly,” says Honey. “It’s an easy watch and, you know, people like shows with an unknown ending. Every night, it’s like: OMG, a new challenge! Or: OMG, new people on the show!” Does she prefer it to her previous favourite show, Bake Off? “Yes,” she says. “Yes,” echoes her big sister, “because it is on every night. There is no time for you to think about anything else. It is wholly consuming.” Got that, Paul Hollywood?
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS REVIEW
SHE BEARS THE CROSS OF EXILE AND MURDERED BROTHER
The Iranian-born first bishop of the new see of Loughborough tells Leaf Arbuthnot of the tragedy behind her ministry
G
uli Francis-Dehqani, who was appointed Bishop of Loughborough last week, shows me a curious artefact. It is a faded pillowcase, pocked with four bullet holes from the Iranian revolution of 1979. The bullets miraculously missed the head of Francis-Dehqani’s father, Hassan, then the Bishop of Iran, who was asleep when his bedroom was stormed by gunmen. They asked for his name and tried to murder him. Hassan’s wife, Margaret, threw her body over his and took a bullet to the hand. She then chased the attackers out of the house, blood dripping from her wound. Hassan, who died nine years ago in exile in Britain, was a former Muslim who had been baptised in his teens. His prominence as a Christian leader of Iranian descent and his refusal to hand over church assets made him an obvious target in the revolution, in which the prowestern monarchy was overturned. The family fled to England after Bahram, Hassan’s son, was shot dead in his car in 1980. His father was out of the country at the time. It is thought that by killing the bishop’s only son, the revolutionaries were attempting to lure Hassan back to Iran. Returning would have meant near-certain assassination. Bahram was 24 when he was shot. Guli, his little sister, was 13. She remembers packing her belongings into a suitcase after her brother’s funeral and leaving for Britain, where she expected to remain for a matter of weeks until things calmed down in Iran. Now Francis-Dehqani, 51, has followed in her father’s footsteps and is looking forward to becoming a bishop (the consecration is in November). “I’m excited, humbled and overwhelmed,” she says. “I don’t think that I’ve travelled the conventional pathway to get to this place. My parents would have been delighted.” Despite her title, Francis-Dehqani will be based in Leicester. The Loughborough
It was a shock to go from the chaos of revolution to a strict English boarding school suffragan see was created partly to reach out to Leicester’s black, Asian and other ethnic-minority communities. “We have to take the issue of diversity [in the church] seriously,” FrancisDehqani says. “There is a lot of awareness, but I don’t think that hoping for something, or even praying for something, is enough. We have to actually make changes, take risks.” We are sitting in the vicarage in Oakham, east of Leicester, where Francis-Dehqani has lived for 13 years with her husband, Lee, a canon, and their three children. In the kitchen, Lee is cooking dinner. He has learnt to make a number of Persian dishes from his wife. When Francis-Dehqani arrived in Britain as a teenager, she was soon packed off to boarding school. Her parents wanted to provide her with stability after so much turmoil. “It was a huge culture shock to go from the chaos of revolution, where I hadn’t been to school in months, to a strict, structured boarding environment,” she remembers. “My English was a bit stilted, and kids rushed up to me to say, ‘What house are you in?’ I didn’t know what they were talking about.” The family was mourning Bahram, whose killers were never brought to justice or even identified. I ask FrancisDehqani if her father, who continued his ministry in exile after he moved to Britain, felt any guilt for having inadvertently turned his son into a target. “I think my dad spent the rest of his life coming to terms with that,” she says. “Forgiveness is not an easy option. If you’re really going to embrace it, it’s very demanding.” After school Francis-Dehqani studied music at Nottingham. On “day one” in university halls she met Lee. Her promotion from small-town vicar to bishop means that her family will be uprooted from the predominantly white Oakham to the multicultural, multi-denominational Leicester. Her children are 17 and 12 (the youngest are twins). How are they taking the impending upheaval?
Guli FrancisDehqani says she feels especially close to Christians being persecuted in the Middle East
ANDREW FOX
“It’s a huge change, and there’s some anxiety there, primarily about the fact that they’ll have to start new schools and make new friends. But I think they feel quite proud of me.” The post will also lead to a marital role reversal, as she leapfrogs Lee in the church hierarchy and he focuses on bringing up the children. “Up until now, I’ve always followed him. Now he’s following me,” Francis-Dehqani grins. Should Britain help more refugees desperate to move here? “I think we need to be as generous as we possibly can be. People don’t by and large choose to uproot themselves to somewhere completely alien without good reason. Sometimes we just talk about numbers as if these people aren’t human beings.” Recently she has felt “especially close” to Christians in the Middle East who are being persecuted. She hopes that her new role is “symbolic of some kind of new life” at the heart of the church in Iran. Has she been back to her homeland since she left? “No,” she says. “I don’t know if I would get in. Things are very uncertain there. I have responsibilities — I have children.” She mentions Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who was thrown into prison in Iran in 2016 on unspecified charges. “But the pull [to go to Iran] is strong for me. It is sometimes almost a physical pain. I want to show my husband and children where I grew up. Nothing lasts for ever. I still have hopes that one day it’ll be possible.” @leafarbuthnot
NEWS REVIEW PICTURE OF THE WEEK PHILIPPE WOJAZER
The US air force Thunderbirds display team flies over the Arc de Triomphe in Paris’s Place du Carrousel during Bastille Day celebrations PEOPLE-WATCHING
THE MISSING CLINCH BETWEEN CORBYN AND CLOONEY There’s nothing like a mystery blonde to stir the tabloids to life, and The Sun perked up nicely on Monday when it published photographs of Jeremy Corbyn’s spin doctor, Seumas Milne, canoodling on the balcony of an east London hotel with a woman who was not his wife. The mystery didn’t stay mysterious for long. By Wednesday, much of Fleet Street had identified the blonde as Jennifer Robinson, a glamorous Australian lawyer with the kind of connections that any tabloid editor would sigh for. It isn’t just that Robinson has represented Julian Assange of WikiLeaks in his fight against extradition to Sweden, or that Assange has recently become friendly with Pamela Anderson, the former Baywatch beauty. It also turns out that Robinson is best buddies
PROFILE QUEEN LETIZIA
The British have long had reason to believe we corner the market in royal style icons, so many may have been surprised to discover last week that the Duchess of Cambridge has foreign competition. Queen Letizia of Spain, accompanying King Felipe on a state visit to Britain, matched Kate tiara for tiara — and the huge diamond and sapphire rocks dangling from her ears at a Guildhall banquet were clearly sending hidden messages about the Spanish claim to Gibraltar. Letizia’s position in the royal pecking order is such that even Princess Anne was obliged to deliver a rare curtsy at the dinner. At 44, the former Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano is nine years older than the former Kate Middleton but shares a similar rise from comfortable middle-class obscurity to gilded royal goldfish bowl. The grand-daughter of a taxi driver and daughter of a journalist, Letizia worked for several Spanish and foreign media organisations before becoming the main presenter of Telediario 2, the most popular television news show in Spain. Unlike Kate and her intensely
scrutinised on-again, off-again romance with Prince William, however, Letizia fell in love with Felipe, then the Prince of Asturias, without the public or press noticing. They got engaged in 2003, upsetting Spanish conservatives not only because that meant she would eventually become Spain’s first commoner queen, but also because she was a divorcee (her first marriage, to a teacher, had lasted only a year). Since then she has barely put a foot wrong, giving birth to a pair of adorable daughters (but no male heir) and slipping comfortably into the shoes of her mother-in-law, Queen Sofia, when King Juan Carlos abdicated in Felipe’s favour in 2014. Blessed with ravishing looks and a more daring embrace of fashion trends than tends to be the rule at Buckingham Palace, Letizia has become a fixture on Spanish magazine covers. She wears leather trousers, hot-pink jackets and Stella McCartney dresses, as well as the odd piece from high street shops such as Zara and Mango. The Spanish queen’s assets were on dazzling display during last week’s state visit, the highlight of which was undoubtedly the diamond-tiara-off, pitting Letizia’s statuesque fleur-de-lys headpiece — which was worn to the Queen’s coronation in 1953 by the Countess of Barcelona — against Kate’s more subdued but evocative jewels, worn by the late Diana, Princess of Wales. For Gibraltar’s sake, we’ll call that one a draw.
CLAIRE FOY
DAVID SLATER
KIRSTIE ALLSOPP
CHUCK BLAZER
Who needs a queen when you’ve got Claire Foy? The Stockport-born actress has regally been sweeping all before her since she starred as the young Queen Elizabeth in the Netflix series The Crown. Her handbag is already bursting with gongs — a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award among them — and now she’s up for America’s prime television honour, an Emmy. Foy, 33, has been filming a second series of The Crown but her reign is about to end. In a cruel reversal of Hollywood’s notorious ageism, she has been deemed too young to play an older queen.
The courts have made a monkey of David Slater, who claims to have taught a troupe of crested black macaques to take selfies with one of his cameras. The snaps were published around the world, but Wikipedia and other websites refused to compensate Slater, and an animal rights group sued him on behalf of the monkeys. After three years of legal wrangling over who owns the copyright — Slater or the animal who clicked the shutter — the Chepstow-based photographer has declared himself broke and “on the verge of packing it all in”. We recommend against shedding crocodile tears — the crocodile may sue.
If every Englishman’s home were really a castle, there would never be a row about where to put a washing machine — anywhere between the moat and the turrets would do. Unfortunately for the property guru and television presenter Kirstie Allsopp, most Britons don’t live in castles and don’t have a servants’ wing to spare. Allsopp’s claim last week that it is “disgusting” to keep a washing machine in the kitchen duly earned her a wave of ridicule. Allsopp dismissed her critics as “a bunch of total f***wits”, which suggests the next time she’s near the washing powder, she might want to rinse out her mouth.
US football executive and central figure in Fifa corruption scandals Chuck Blazer, who has died aged 72, made millions of dollars from bribes and kickbacks as a member of Fifa’s executive committee. When the FBI caught up with him on tax evasion charges, he blew the whistle on decades of fraud that ultimately led to the downfall of Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter. A piratical character who sometimes carried his pet macaw, Max, on his shoulder, Blazer kept two apartments in New York’s Trump Tower, one of which was said to be occupied by his cats. His penchant for collecting commissions on football deals earned him the nickname “Mr Ten Per Cent”. New York Times
Life in brief Born: September 15, 1972, Oviedo, Spain
with Amal Clooney, the prominent human rights lawyer whose husband is an ageing actor named George. In short, Milne’s extramarital adventure confirmed the long-held theory that if you dig deep enough, the wheel of celebrity relationships will, to mangle a metaphor, come full circle. The easiest way to get from Jeremy to George turns out to be via that snog at the Courthouse hotel in Shoreditch.
Education: Ramiro de Maeztu eztu High School, Madrid; MA in audiovisual journalism Career: joins state broadcaster TVE, 2000; becomes news anchor, 2002; becomes Queen of Spain, 2014 Private life: married Alonso Guerrero Perez, 1998-1999; married Felipe, Prince of Asturias, 2004, two daughters
HIRED
SEUMAS MILNE SPIN DOCTOR
JEREMY CORBYN LABOUR LEADER
KISSED
JENNIFER ROBINSON LAWYER BEST FRIENDS WITH
MARRIED TO
ONCE REPRESENTED
AMAL CLOONEY HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER NEW FRIENDS WITH
JULIAN ASSANGE WIKILEAKS FOUNDER
GEORGE CLOONEY ACTOR ONCE RUMOURED TO BE DATING
PAMELA ANDERSON BAYWATCH ACTRESS
LAST WORDS
ILLUSTRATION BY JENNY HOLLEY
RED-TOPS
TUBBY CRAWFORD Daring Second World War submarine commander famed for gallantry Captain Michael “Tubby” Crawford, who has died aged 100, was an unflappable Royal Navy officer who proved as adept at dodging German depth charges as he was skilled at torpedoing enemy ships. He also sent one of the war’s most memorable messages from a submarine under attack. As first lieutenant of the submarine Upholder in the 1940s, he was forced to take charge after a surprise surface attack near Malta. His captain was hit and fell, unconscious. Crawford seized command, dived Upholder and turned out to sea, signalling a British submarine nearby: “Air attack. Stay dived. Captain shit.” It was several minutes before a correcting signal was sent: “For shit read shot.” His quick reactions earned him a Distinguished Service Cross. The Daily Telegraph
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The Sunday Times July 16, 2017
NEWS REVIEW
Jeremy Clarkson Like most stag dos, we were out of control ... then the groom’s boxers were pulled down
B
oating enthusiasts on the Norfolk Broads — or Ukip, as they’re known these days — have taken to the internet to express their dismay about how the peace and tranquillity of this enormous bog is being ruined by the rowdy behaviour of visitors.“Some of them may even be foreign,” no one has said specifically. But you can bet it’s what many were thinking. Stag weekends seem to be the main cause for concern, and when I read that, my eyes started to roll with despair. Yes. No one likes to share so much as a postcode with a bunch of boorish drunks celebrating the forthcoming nuptials of a mate. But these things are a part of the fabric of society, so we just have to accept that from time to time a night out in the pub is going to be spoilt by some sick and a bit of broken furniture. ’Twas ever thus. However, if you actually examine the complaints from Captain Farage and his mates, it looks as though they may have a point. One says he recently witnessed a
stag do where all the participants got drunk and then started throwing one another into the water. So far, so normal — back in your box, Boaty McBoatface. But then he goes on to say they stripped the groom naked, in front of everyone, waxed him — that’s weird — and, after throwing him into the water too, took out their penises and urinated on him. I’m sorry, but that’s disgusting. I thought a stag night was something that involved a group of friends. Which raises a question. What sort of friends would decide to urinate on their host? I once urinated on someone who tried to get a selfie while I was standing at a motorway service station’s urinals. But I’ve never peed on a friend and never would. It turns out, however, that this is far from an isolated incident. Recently a plane had to make an unscheduled landing at Gatwick after someone on a stag party thought it would be hilarious to set fire to the groom. So he did. He looked at his mate, someone he’d presumably known for years, and he thought: “I think it would be for the best if he were to be married while sporting
some third-degree burns.” So he set fire to his hair. It gets worse. Several years ago, various people on a stag party on a blazing hot day in Bournemouth decided that the bridegroom and his best man should be cooked. So they staked them out in the sun using handcuffs, stripped them naked, and covered them in flour, eggs and tomato sauce. I find that odd. Because I’ve been drunk many times, but I’ve never looked at Jimmy Carr, who’s a friend, and thought: “You know what? He’d be lovely on a bed of fresh pasta.” I’ll be honest. I’m not really a fan of stag nights. I find the whole idea of all-male company extremely distressing. All that cigar-infused nonsense about snooker cues, speedboats, business deals and hookers that men feel compelled to talk about when left to their own devices makes me nauseous. Things are even worse when you sprinkle a bit of forced jollity into the mix. Taking off a man’s clothes and chaining him to a set of traffic lights could possibly, if you are 20, be mildly
amusing if it’s spontaneous. But feeling obliged to do it? Nah. That’s just rubbish. That said, there was one occasion I was on a stag night and was hauled out of my dining chair to hold down the groom while other chaps shaved off his pubic hair. It seemed to me to be a terrible thing to do and I was very unamused about being forced to join in.
I blame The Hangover. For a whole generation the film was a new minimum standard
Until they got his boxers down and we noticed the poor man had quite the smallest penis we’d ever seen. The embarrassed silence was eventually broken by someone saying: “You can’t get married with that.” Mostly, though, the stag nights I went on in the Eighties and Nineties were reasonably calm affairs. I think I once played football with a bin bag on the Fulham Road. And I seem to recall that in an Indian restaurant someone once threw a nan into the ceiling fan. I fear it may have been me. But that’s it. No one ever got driven to London Zoo and fed to the lions or strapped to the live fire targets on Salisbury Plain. Today, things are very different. Now, a stag night is as often as not a stag weekend. You get to the airport, drink a hundred pints, get on the plane, drink a hundred more pints, say something offensive to the stewardess, get off the plane, say something racist to the immigration officer and then spend a thousand pounds drinking more pints until it’s time to experiment with some drugs your mate’s bought. And then,
when you wake up from the coma, you find Instagram is rammed full of pictures of your naked and freshly tattooed arse with a chicken sticking out of it. Strippers are now compulsory. And give me strength on that one because what face exactly are you supposed to pull while some enormous Romanian woman pushes her pudendum into your mate’s sunburned forehead? I blame The Hangover. It was a brilliant film. I laughed a lot at nearly all of it. Unfortunately, for a whole generation, it was more than that. It was a new minimum standard. Anything less than an angry Chinese person in the boot, some amateur dentistry and a stolen police car and you haven’t given the groom the send-off he deserves. Hmmm. I’m not sure. I think — and I’m going to have the backing of the Norfolk Broads boating community on this one — that more than anything else in modern society, someone needs to press the stag night reset button and go back to the days when you drank a bit too much port on the night before the wedding. And then went to bed.
NEWMAN’S WEEK
“He should’ve appealed to the opposition to help him make it to the next stage!”
“When there’s no flag flying it means Posh and Becks are in residence”
“Deliveroo? I’d like a hard Brexit”
Buy prints or signed copies of Nick Newman’s cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk
WEATHER AROUND THE WORLD
THE UK
Amsterdam 21°C c London 22°C c Athens 32 f Los Angeles 36 s Auckland 15 f Madrid 38 s Bangkok 27 th Mexico City 21 f Barcelona 28 s Miami 32 f Beijing 37 f Moscow 24 th Belgrade 26 f Nairobi 23 sh Berlin 21 f New Delhi 38 f Bogota 19 sh New Orleans 32 th Boston 31 th New York 30 s Brussels 23 f Oslo 20 sh Budapest 25 f Panama 31 th Buenos Aires 9 f Paris 27 f Cairo 42 s Prague 23 f Calgary 25 s Rio de Janeiro 24 f Cape Town 12 sh Rome 32 s Caracas 24 th San Francisco 24 s Casablanca 30 s Santiago 9 s Chicago 22 f Seoul 25 th Dubai 40 f Seychelles 26 sh Dublin 20 f Singapore 29 f Geneva 24 s Stockholm 22 sh Gibraltar 29 f Sydney 17 s Guatemala 27 f Tel Aviv 33 s Helsinki 16 s Tenerife 29 s Hong Kong 29 th Tokyo 33 f Istanbul 25 f Toronto 26 th Jersey 21 f Trinidad 31 th Johannesburg 19 s Tunis 40 s La Paz 15 s Venice 25 s Lagos 28 th Vienna 25 f Lima 22 f Warsaw 22 f Lisbon 32 s Washington DC 32 s Key c=cloud, dr=drizzle, ds=dust storm, f=fair, fg=fog, g=gales, h=hail, m=mist, r=rain, sh=showers, sl=sleet, sn=snow, s=sun, th=thunder, w=windy
EUROPE 17
18
18
26 25
27
26
26
25 2
33
33
38 30
¬ It will be another fine and hot day across Spain and Portugal, with almost unbroken sunshine ¬ Italy and the Adriatic will also stay fine and sunny, but a few showers are expected over mainland Greece ¬ Turkey and Cyrus will be dry and sunny ¬Cloudy at times over the Alps, but most places will stay fine
33
¬ It should be a fine day across France, but some patchy light rain will affect the Low Countries, Germany and Denmark ¬ Much of eastern Europe will stay dry with broken cloud and sunny spells. A few showers are likely over Romania and Ukraine ¬ Cloudy over Norway and Sweden with rain, but Finland should stay dry
TODAY’S WEATHER
SUN, STREET LIGHTS & MOON
UK forecast A cloudy start across southern Britain as a cold front brings patchy outbreaks of rain and misty conditions to the hills of Wales and southwestern England, though the rain should become lighter as it moves southeast into southern England. Farther north many places will be dry and sunny, though a few showers are likely over northern Scotland. Winds will be a mainly light west or southwesterly, fresher in the north
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Aberdeen Belfast Birmingham Bristol Cardiff Cork Dublin Glasgow London Manchester Newcastle Norwich Plymouth
14
rough
17 19
REGIONAL FORECASTS
slight
London, SE England Dry in the morning, a few light showers later. Light westerly winds. Max 25C. Tonight, mainly dry. Min 10C Midlands, E Anglia, E England Cloudy with some patchy light rain at times. Light westerly winds. Max 24C. Tonight, clear spells. Min 8C Channel Is, SW and Cent S England, S Wales Cloudy and misty with rain or drizzle. Light westerly winds. Max 23C. Tonight, becoming dry. Min 8C N Wales, NW England, Isle of Man Early drizzle and mist gradually clearing. Light or moderate northwesterly winds. Max 20C. Tonight, clear spells. Min 4C Cent N and NE England Mainly dry with sunny spells. Light northwesterly winds. Max 20C. Tonight, clear periods. Min 5C Scotland Scattered showers in the north, drier and brighter in the south with some sunshine. Moderate or fresh west or southwesterly winds. Max 17C. Tonight, rain in places. Min 9C N Ireland, Republic of Ireland Mostly dry with sunny spells. Light to moderate westerly winds. Max 19C. Tonight, clear spells. Min 5C
24
20
20 23 17
Monday A few showers over Scotland, most places dry. Max 23C
moderate
At 23:00 BST tonight: Jupiter is conspicuous but low in the WSW; star Arcturus in Bootes is high above Jupiter; Saturn is some 15° high and due S; red supergiant Antares in Scorpius lies 14° below-right of Saturn; Vega in Lyra is SE of overhead. Venus, low in the ENE before dawn, blazes to the left of Aldebaran in Taurus tomorrow and left of the Moon on Thursday. Alan Pickup
21 Isobel Lang slight
15
THE UK LAST WEEK Warmest by day Heathrow Greater London (Sunday) 28.4C
Coldest by night Kinbrace Sutherland (Thursday) 1.6C
29
22
Wettest Chivenor Devon (Tuesday) 42.0mm
Sunniest Tiree, Argyll (Wednesday) 16.0hr
18 28
25
19
Wednesday Cloudier with outbreaks of thundery rain. Max 29C
22
27 17
22
24
Tuesday A fine day with broken cloud and sunny spells. Max 27C
Moon sets 13:15 13:29 13:10 13:12 13:15 13:38 13:29 13:23 13:02 13:13 13:11 12:57 13:18
Rain, sun, hail: all Swithin the bounds of possibility
25
22
23
Moon rises --:---:---:---:---:-00:46 00:36 --:---:---:---:---:---:--
Moon phase
10
22
21
Lights off 04:39 05:10 05:06 05:14 05:16 05:35 05:19 04:56 05:03 05:02 04:51 04:52 05:25
19 17
20
20
Sun sets/ lights on 21:51 21:50 21:22 21:20 21:22 21:45 21:44 21:51 21:10 21:29 21:35 21:10 21:21
THE SKY AT NIGHT
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THE WEEK AHEAD 21
Sun rises 04:37 05:09 05:04 05:12 05:15 05:34 05:17 04:55 05:02 05:01 04:49 04:51 05:24
17
20
16 21 17
Thursday Some sunny spells but also a few showers. Max 22C
14
19
17
20
23 24
Friday Rain in the north and west, showers elsewhere. Max 23C
15
Saturday Another day with sunshine and showers. Max 23C
It was St Swithin’s Day yesterday and rain fell. Does that mean we are in for 40 wet days? The Met Office has no record of 40 dry or 40 wet days in a row following St Swithin’s Day. What we do know is that the weather’s going to throw in a bit of everything this week: high temperatures, sunshine, thunderstorms and hail. Last week some places had their first rain of the month. After a warm start, with some thunderstorms across East Anglia, active fronts swept heavy rain eastwards. Plumpton, East Sussex, recorded 44mm (nearly 2in) of rain in 24 hours; 33mm fell on St James’s Park, London, in just 12 hours. This cleared fairly quickly on Wednesday morning and the rest of the week
saw plenty of fine weather. Weakening fronts spread southeastwards this weekend, introducing fresher air from the north. Today the rain should peter out as it spreads across England and Wales, mainly affecting western counties. Warm, sunny spells may develop over the muggy southeast and also the fresher north. Any remaining drizzle will clear tomorrow and Tuesday, and most places will be sunny. The theme changes after that, as low pressure to the south draws up hot and humid conditions from Spain and France, as well as the threat of intense storms, which are likely to spread north. Fresh, breezy but still unsettled weather from the west should push away the storms later in the week. Isobel Lang is a Sky News forecaster