Boris Johnson

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Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics by Peter Geoghegan

4chan, Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, corporate raider, crony capitalism, data science, deepfake, deindustrialization, demographic winter, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, East Village, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, fake news, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Greta Thunberg, invisible hand, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open borders, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, post-truth, post-war consensus, pre–internet, private military company, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, Torches of Freedom, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, éminence grise

The IEA’s Mark Littlewood would later tell Greenpeace’s undercover reporter that Singham spoke with Michael Gove “every three or four days, along with David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox”.23 In July 2017, Singham was the only think tanker invited to the Brexit department’s summit of business leaders at Chevening, the foreign secretary’s grace and favour pile in the Kent countryside.24 A few months later, Singham wrote a letter signed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove calling for May to adopt a harder Brexit strategy.25 Singham was particularly well known in the Brexit departments. Trade Minister Liam Fox appointed him to a committee of experts.

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In December 2019, shortly after the British general election, Tim Montgomerie, an advisor on social justice to Boris Johnson, addressed a Danube Institute meeting in Budapest. Montgomerie praised Hungary’s “interesting early thinking” on “the limits of liberalism”. “I think we are seeing that in the UK as well,” he said, adding that Britain should forge a “special relationship” with Hungary after Brexit.98 It’s hard not to see traces of Orbán’s ostentatious populism in Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Orbán, however, demurred when Brexiters called on him to come to their aid. Despite pleas from his long-time ally Nigel Farage, Orbán refused to block the European Union’s extension to Brexit in September 2019.

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, Spectator, July 2019. 62 Jacob Granger, ‘2019 Reuters Digital News Report finds that trust in the media continues to fall’, journalism.co.uk, June 2019. 63 Sam Knight, ‘The Empty Promise of Boris Johnson’, New Yorker, June 2019. 64 ‘Debunking years of tabloid claims about Europe’, The Economist, June 2016. 65 Andy Bounds, ‘Sun boycott reduced Euroscepticism on Merseyside, study shows’, Financial Times, August 2019. 66 ‘New Report: Who Owns the UK Media?’, Media Reform Coalition, March 2019. 67 Chris Cook, Defeated by Brexit (London, 2019), p. 9. 68 Sarah Provan, Adam Samson, Charlotte Middlehurst, Philip Georgiadis and Myles McCormick, ‘General election 2019: Boris Johnson declares “powerful mandate to get Brexit done” – as it happened’, Financial Times, December 2019. 69 Ibid. 70 Patrick Grafton-Green, ‘Boris Johnson “orders review of BBC licence fee” amid “boycott” of flagship Radio 4 Today programme over “pro-Remain bias”’, Evening Standard, December 2019. 71 Paul Simpson, ‘Nigel Farage exclusive: “Advertising?

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019 by Stewart Lee

Airbnb, AltaVista, anti-communist, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, Donald Trump, Etonian, fake news, Ford Model T, imposter syndrome, Jeremy Corbyn, New Journalism, off-the-grid, Overton Window, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, white flight

6 The Treachery of Images, René Magritte, 1929. 7 Imagine being able to just say such hilariously banal things naturally, as Mr May does here, without spending hours, like I do, trying to think up hilariously banal things on purpose. When Boris Johnson’s inner monster goes on the rampage 21 May 2017 Last Wednesday,1 our chief Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, dressed up in a Sikh costume to visit a Bristol gurdwara. There he told the alcohol-abstaining supplicants to take bottles of Johnnie Walker to Indian relatives to speed up post-Brexit booze exports, leading one to comment that had he made that suggestion in India, the foreign secretary would have been killed immediately. Another successful Boris Johnson PR exercise. That said, I don’t think Boris Johnson was seeking to pique the Sikhs. Indeed, Boris Johnson’s own wife, Marina Wheeler QC, is half Sikh, though it is not clear which half, so it is difficult to deduce anything from this.2 It might be just her leg and some bits of one of her arms.

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And likewise, Boris Johnson™ absolutely cannot have our Incredible Hulk™ – no way, man! You’ve taken our future. At least leave us our comic books, dude. I emailed various comics creatives to solicit their opinions on Boris Johnson™’s desire to actually be the actual Incredible Hulk™, the most succinct coming from exiled Hulk artist Gary Frank. ‘I can’t help feeling that Boris Johnson™ slightly missed the point of it all,’ wrote Frank, ‘in that Hulk’s alter ego, Bruce Banner, doesn’t actually want to get angry, become stupid and then smash everything to fuck. Do you think Boris Johnson™ misread the Hulk comics as a sort of Tony Robbins self-help guide to fulfilling your potential?’

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In torn rags, he says, ‘Tell me – quickly – what happened? I – I can’t remember – it’s like an ugly fading nightmare!’ Banner’s haunted face recalls nothing so much as the face of Boris Johnson, as he emerged the morning after the Brexit vote, in denial of the destruction that his own inner Hulk had wrought. Boris Johnson was always the Hulk, all along. And he always was the golem. The ancient legend claimed him at birth, and it knew Boris Johnson better than Boris Johnson knew himself, as legends are wont to do. And now his attic awaits. Wow. I guess most posters here would have sided with the attackers of Charlie Hebdo too.

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles by Fintan O'Toole

airport security, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, deindustrialization, deliberate practice, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, full employment, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, l'esprit de l'escalier, labour mobility, late capitalism, open borders, rewilding, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, technoutopianism, zero-sum game

At the end of the ‘scepter’d isle’ speech Gaunt says something that may in fact be more pertinent to England’s current situation that his earlier hyperbole: ‘That England, that was wont to conquer others, / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.’ 2 July 2016 Boris Johnson’s campaign to succeed David Cameron collapses in farce. Donald Trump is looming as the most likely next president of the United States. We are living with the politics of the fake orgasm. The leaders of the Brexit campaign are obliged to join in with the ecstasies of their followers. They must let out a few polite yelps of satisfaction. But a week on, it is increasingly clear that theirs is a phoney consummation. The earth may have moved – but not for them. As shown by Boris Johnson’s retreat from the prospect of having to actually govern the new kingdom he did so much to create, it was all a performance.

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No one can, or will, ‘reach any conclusion’. 23 September 2017 Theresa May delivers a big Brexit speech in Florence, formally asking for a transition period after March 2019. Her foreign secretary Boris Johnson goes on manoeuvres with a big essay of his own, staking out a hardline position. Brexit is written in binary code. It is all zeros and ones – out of the European Union or in. In his long Telegraph essay last weekend, the British foreign secretary and totem of the Leave campaign Boris Johnson reiterated the iron imperatives of last year’s referendum: ‘The choice was binary. The result was decisive. There is simply no way – or no good way – of being 52 per cent out and 48 per cent in.’

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TIMELINE 26 June 2018: The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill receives Royal Assent and becomes an Act of Parliament. 6 July 2018: The cabinet meets at Chequers to agree a collective position for the future Brexit negotiations with the EU. 9 July 2018: David Davis resigns as secretary of state for exiting the European Union and is replaced by Dominic Raab. Boris Johnson resigns as foreign secretary and is replaced by Jeremy Hunt. 24 July 2018: UK government publishes white paper on future UK–EU relations. 23 August 2018: UK government publishes the first collection of technical notices providing guidance on how to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. 10 July 2018 On 7 July Theresa May holds a cabinet meeting at Chequers and pushes through an agreement that the UK will seek to remain closely aligned to the customs union and single market after Brexit. David Davis resigns as Brexit secretary, followed by Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.

Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem by Tim Shipman

banking crisis, Beeching cuts, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, centre right, Clapham omnibus, Corn Laws, corporate governance, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, drone strike, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, high-speed rail, iterative process, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, Kickstarter, kremlinology, land value tax, low interest rates, mutually assured destruction, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, Snapchat, Steve Bannon, working poor

Determined to close down the story, Baker messaged all 170 MPs and peers on an old mailing list he had used to stage EU rebellions against David Cameron and said, ‘This is an attack on Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson’s view hasn’t changed, he’s in favour of migration under democratic control. Nothing has changed.’ He sent the same message to the European Research Group WhatsApp group and then tweeted his support for Johnson, urging others to do the same. ‘The result was that within fifteen minutes we’d destroyed that operation against Boris,’ a leading Eurosceptic said. ‘What they were hoping for was Eurosceptics turning on Boris Johnson and tearing him limb from limb.’ Baker had turned his Eurosceptic shock troops from a guerrilla unit fighting his own government into a praetorian guard for hard Brexit.

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Unless … Tim Shipman Westminster, Preggio, Camerata, San Nicolo,Church Knowle, Studland and Blackheath July–October 2017 Timeline 2016 23 Jun – Britain votes to leave the European Union by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent 29 Jun – Other 27 member states agree a ‘no negotiations without notification’ stance on Brexit talks and Article 50 13 Jul – Theresa May becomes prime minister and pledges to create ‘a country that works for everyone’ 7 Sep – May insists she will not give a ‘running commentary’ on Brexit negotiations 24 Sep – Jeremy Corbyn re-elected as Labour Party leader 30 Sep – Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s CEO, says he could scrap potential new investment in its Sunderland plant 2 Oct – In Brexit speech to party conference, May says she will trigger Article 50 before the end of March and create a Great Repeal Bill to replace the 1972 European Communities Act 5 Oct – In main speech to party conference, May criticises ‘citizens of nowhere’ 6 Oct – Keir Starmer appointed shadow Brexit secretary 27 Oct – Nissan says it will build its Qashqai and X-Trail models at its Sunderland plant, protecting 7,000 jobs 2 Nov – At Spectator awards dinner May compares Boris Johnson to a dog that was put down 3 Nov – High Court rules that only Parliament not the government has the power to trigger Article 50 4 Nov – Daily Mail calls the judges ‘enemies of the people’ 8 Nov – Donald Trump elected the 45th president of the United States 14 Nov – FT reveals the EU wants a €60 billion exit bill from Britain 15 Nov – Boris Johnson tells a Czech paper the UK will ‘probably’ leave the customs union and is reprimanded by May 19 Nov – Johnson accused of turning up to a cabinet Brexit meeting with the wrong papers 20 Nov – Sixty pro-Brexit Tory MPs demand Britain leaves the single market 21 Nov – Trump calls for Nigel Farage to be made British ambassador to Washington 7 Dec – MPs back government amendment to opposition day debate saying the government must set out its Brexit plans but also that Article 50 should be triggered by the end of March 8 Dec – Johnson calls Saudi Arabia a ‘puppeteer’ in the Middle East, sparking a rebuke from Downing Street and fears he will resign 11 Dec – Fiona Hill’s ‘Trousergate’ texts to Nicky Morgan, banning her from Downing Street, are published 15 Dec – BBC reveals that Sir Ivan Rogers has privately warned ministers a post-Brexit trade deal might take ten years 2017 4 Jan – Ivan Rogers resigns 10 Jan – Corbyn announces a wage cap in his ‘Trump relaunch’ 17 Jan – In speech at Lancaster House May announces Britain will seek a hard Brexit leaving the single market, the customs union and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

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Having seen off the two most awkward female backbenchers, Morgan and Soubry, she now had to deal with the two men who, in their very different ways, had become the biggest headaches in her government: Boris Johnson and Ivan Rogers. 5 How Do You Solve a Problem Like Boris? Open with a joke, they say. Theresa May’s gag certainly got a big laugh when she began her party conference speech. It was the perfect way to break the ice with the party faithful. In retrospect it might have been better not to choose as her joke the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. Clearly revelling in her big moment, May strode to the mark and said, ‘When we came to Birmingham this week, some big questions were hanging in the air.

Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (And Why They Were Never Going To) by Chris Grey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, game design, global pandemic, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, lockdown, non-tariff barriers, open borders, post-truth, reserve currency, Robert Mercer

barrier=accesspaylog 100 Peter Foster and James Crisp, ‘“Despairing” EU officials braced for showdown with Boris Johnson after combative Commons performance’ The Telegraph 26 September 2019 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/26/despairing-eu-officials-braced-showdown-boris-johnson-combative/ 101 Andrew Woodcock, ‘Brexit: Boris Johnson accused of being “out of his depth” after rebuff in talks with EU’s Juncker’ The Independent 18 September 2019 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-boris-johnson-jean-claude-juncker-eu-meeting-negotiations-northern-ireland-a9110411.html 102 Alan McGuinness, ‘Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski defends bid to get Poland to veto Brexit delay’ Sky News 21 October 2019 https://news.sky.com/story/tory-mp-daniel-kawczynski-defends-bid-to-get-poland-to-veto-brexit-delay-11841185 103 Sam Fleming, George Parker and Arthur Beesley, ‘Boris Johnson warns of return to Irish customs checks’ Financial Times 1 October 2019 https://www.ft.com/content/488cd226-e467-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc 104 David Allen Green, ‘Boris Johnson subverts the rule of law’ Financial Times 11 September 2020 https://www.ft.com/content/5f57d498-d3e0-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77 105 For which, see Jonathan Tonge, Stuart Wilks-Heeg and Louise Thompson (eds), Britain Votes: The 2019 General Election (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) 106 Dominic Wring and Stephen Ward, ‘From Bad to Worse?

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fbclid=IwAR0RsJm881CRltt9vkOGIzlLmhmayHH_aY6lW_6YBJUK2q3WDFaGbMJkU1c 120 Adrian Zorzut, ‘Video resurfaces of Iain Duncan Smith trying to stop MPs scrutinising Brexit agreement he now wants rewritten’ New European 5 August 2020 https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/video-of-ids-commons-speech-against-wa-scrutiny-found-on-85954 121 Michael Savage and Toby Helm, ‘Top lawyers slam Suella Braverman for wrecking UK’s reputation’ The Observer 12 September 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/12/top-lawyers-slam-suella-braverman-for-wrecking-uks-reputation 122 Dr Brigid Fowler, ‘Parliament’s role in scrutinising the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement is a farce’ Hansard Society Blog 29 December 2020 https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/parliaments-role-in-scrutinising-the-uk-eu-trade-and-cooperation-agreement 123 Faisal Islam, ‘What Boris Johnson’s mistake tells us about our future’ BBC News 24 December 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55442982 124 ‘Post-Brexit trade: UK having its cake and eating it, says Boris Johnson’ BBC News 30 December 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55486081 125 Martina Bet, ‘Brexit deal betrayal as Johnson’s non-tariff barrier claims torn apart by experts’ Daily Express 26 December 2020 https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1376851/brexit-news-deal-eu-uk-trade-talks-boris-johnson-non-tariff-barriers-single-market-spt 126 Fintan O’Toole, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain (London: Head of Zeus, 2019) 127 George Monbiot, ‘Brexit stems from a civil war in capitalism – we are all just collateral damage’ The Guardian 24 November 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/24/brexit-capitalism 128 Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (London: Verso, 1988) 129 Jonathan Coe, Middle England (London: Penguin Random House, 2018) 130 Flexcit: A plan for leaving the European Union The Leave Alliance 2018 (updated edition) http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/flexcit.pdf 131 David Davis, Tweet 26 May 2016 https://twitter.com/DavidDavisMP/status/735770073822961664 132 Steve Baker, ‘Boris: take back control’ The Critic 24 May 2020 https://thecritic.co.uk/boris-must-take-back-control/ 133 Jonathan Portes, ‘After Brexit, Britain’s hard line on immigration won’t hold’ The Guardian 29 January 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/29/brexit-britain-hard-line-immigration-openness 134 Robert Saunders, ‘Brexit in Historical Perspective.

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uri=CELEX%3A12012M050 50 HMG, ‘Prime Minister’s letter to Donald Tusk triggering Article 50’ 29 March 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50 51 Henry Mance, ‘David Davis warns Brexit timetable will be “row of the summer”’ Financial Times 14 May 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/01396086-38ae-11e7-821a-6027b8a20f23 52 Ibid. 53 Hansard HC Deb, 24 January 2017, vol. 620, col. 169 54 Thomas Colson, ‘Boris Johnson promised frictionless trade after Brexit but now his government admits new border checks are “inevitable”’ Business Insider 11 February 2020 https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-michael-gove-admits-brexit-border-checks-are-inevitable-2020-2?r=US&IR=T 55 The ‘thought experiment’ in this sub-section up to this point is adapted from my article ‘The ultimate Brexit counterfactual’ Prospect 1 August 2018 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/the-ultimate-brexit-counterfactual 56 Daniel Boffey, ‘How Juncker’s Downing Street dinner turned sour’ The Guardian 1 May 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/how-junckers-downing-street-dinner-turned-sour 57 Faisal Islam, ‘No signed “future” trade deal within two years, says Theresa May’ Sky News 5 April 2017 https://news.sky.com/story/no-signed-future-brexit-deal-within-two-years-says-theresa-may-10824347 58 See, for example, Tim Shipman, Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem (London: William Collins, 2017), Tim Ross and Tom McTague, Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election (London: Biteback, 2017) 59 ‘Theresa May’s general election statement in full’ BBC News 18 April 2017 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39630009 60 I am only going to talk about the broad features of the national campaign, but I’d argue the same was true in Scotland and Wales though perhaps slightly less true in Northern Ireland.

Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain by Fintan O'Toole

Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, colonial rule, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, full employment, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Suez crisis 1956, tech billionaire

, The Times, 14 June 1996, p. 20. 6 Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope, Picador, London, 2012, p. 4. 7 George Orwell, ‘The English People’, in Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 610. 8 Thompson’s essay is transcribed at https://againstreactionblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/going-into-europe-an-essay-by-e-p-thompson-1975/ 9 ‘Eurobeer Menace’, Daily Mirror, 25 June 1973. 10 ‘Your Shopping Basket and the Market’, Daily Mirror, 30 May 1975. 11 Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 514. 12 ‘That Tory “have cake and eat it” Brexit strategy explained in all its humiliating glory’, by Dan Bloom, Daily Mirror, 29 November 2016. 13 ‘We’ll Have Our Cake and Eat It’, by Tom Newton-Dunn, Sun, 1 October 2016. 14 ‘Boris Johnson’s top 50 quotes’, by Alice Audley, Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2014. 15 Stanley Johnson, Stanley, I Resume: Further Recollections of an Exuberant Life, Biteback, London, 2014. 16 Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 505. 17 ‘Boris in row over Jamie remarks’, BBC News, 3 October 2006. 18 Robin Young, ‘MEPs rally to defend flavoured crisps’, The Times, 29 April 1991, p. 2. 19 ‘The nasty taste of Brussels directives’, Daily Mail, 30 April 1991. 20 ‘I’m no longer Nasty, but please stop lying about Nice by Boris Johnson’, Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2002. 21 Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, pp. 218–19. 22 Ibid., p. 37. 23 ‘Great-uncle Ernest Thesiger’s army camp’, letter by John Thesiger, Guardian, 27 April 2014. 24 Edward St Aubyn, Bad News, Picador, London, 2012, p. 41. 25 Weight, Patriots, p. 724. 26 ‘Hunger for beef is a part of British pride’, by Ross Benson, Daily Express, 30 March 1996, p. 11. 27 Christopher Hope, Daily Telegraph, 5 June 2018. 28 Jacob Rees-Mogg, ‘My nanny made me the man I am’, Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2014. 29 Alan Bennett, Keep On Keeping On, Farrar Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2016, p. 193. 30 Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, p. 20. 31 Nigel Farage, tweet, 9 November 2017. 32 https://www.petebrown.net/2014/06/16/why-farages-foaming-pint-is-testamen/ 33 Farming for the next generation: Secretary of State Michael Gove sets out his vision on the future of our farming industry at the Oxford Farming Conference 2018, published by DEFRA, 5 January 2018. 34 ‘If your child is fat then you are a bad parent’, by Julia Hartley-Brewer, Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2015. 35 Tower Hamlets Police @MPSTowerHam, tweet, 3.10 p.m., 20 February 2018. 36 @GMPWhitefield, tweet, 10.49 p.m., 20 February 2018. 5.

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, Fintan O’Toole finds himself discovering how trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; how the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact has come to define the style of an entire political elite; how a country that once had colonies is redefining itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation; the strange gastronomic and political significance of prawn-flavoured crisps, and their role in the rise of Boris Johnson; the dreams of revolutionary deregulation and privatisation that drive Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg; and the silent rise of English nationalism, the force that dare not speak its name. He also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster: the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Franklin lost in the Arctic.

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In 1989, for example, the Bruges Group of anti-European Tories heard Professor Kenneth Minogue of the London School of Economics tell them that ‘the European institutions were attempting to create a European Union, in the tradition of the mediaeval popes, Charlemagne, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler’.11 The sleight of hand was not subtle: Hitler tried to unite Europe, so does the EU, therefore the EU is a Hitlerian project. But the lack of subtlety did not stop the trope from being used in the Brexit campaign: ‘Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this [unifying Europe], and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods,’ Boris Johnson told the Daily Telegraph on 15 May 2016, a month before the referendum. That Napoleon and ‘various people’ were not the point of the argument became clear in Johnson’s reiteration of the real point: that the EU was ‘pursuing a similar goal to Hitler in trying to create a powerful superstate’. While Harris was writing Fatherland in 1990, the British secretary of state for trade and industry, Nicholas Ridley, a close friend and ally of the prime minister Margaret Thatcher, told the Spectator that the European Monetary System being introduced by the EU was ‘all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe… I’m not against giving up sovereignty in principle, but not to this lot.

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire by Danny Dorling, Sally Tomlinson

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Alfred Russel Wallace, anti-communist, anti-globalists, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, colonial rule, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Etonian, falling living standards, Flynn Effect, gentrification, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, University of East Anglia, Wayback Machine, We are the 99%, wealth creators

, New Statesman, 26 January, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2018/01/has-uk-economy-really-shrugged-impact-brexit-vote 37 Wallace, T. and McCann, K. (2018) ‘Is Mark Carney right about Brexit?’, Daily Telegraph, 22 May, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/05/22/mark-carney-right-brexit/ 38 BBC (2018) ‘Boris Johnson says he “probably needs” a private plane’, BBC News, 23 May, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44221524 39 Cockburn. P. (2018) ‘Brexiteers like Boris Johnson must realise that past British successes were based on creating alliances, not breaking them up’, The Independent, 21 July, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-brexit-churchill-ww1-napoleon-british-history-a8456916.html 40 YouGov (2018) ‘Voting Intention: Conservatives 42 per cent, Labour 39 per cent (11–12 June)’, https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/06/15/voting-intention-conservatives-42-labour-39-11-12-/ 41 Fransham, M. and Dorling, D. (2017) ‘House prices can keep rising only if the Government backs mass buy-to-let’, Daily Telegraph, 8 April, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/buy-to-let/oxford-academics-house-prices-can-keep-rising-government-backs/ 42 Britain Elects: ‘Having greater control over immigration is more important than having access to free trade with the EU: Agree: 38% (-5), Disagree: 48% (+4), Record high for the % who disagree’, https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1016357278612623360?

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A quote appearing in: Evans, G. (2018) ‘The unwelcome revival of “race science”’, The Guardian, 2 March, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-revival-of-race-science 39 Tomlinson, S. (1990) Multicultural Education in White Schools, pp. 85–6, London: Batsford. 40 See the graphs and tables in: Dorling, D. and Tomlinson, S. (2016) ‘The Creation of Inequality: Myths of Potential and Ability’, op. cit. 41 Dorling, D. (2013) ‘Rising cornflakes – or Boris Johnson’s faux pas’, New Internationalist blog, 2 December, https://newint.org/blog/2013/12/02/boris-johnson-elite 42 Eyres, H. and Myerson, G. (2018) Johnson’s Brexit Dictionary: Or an A to Z of what Brexit really means, London: Pushkin Press, p. 116. 43 As one commentator writing under one particular blog by a person who attempts to measure potential put it: ‘Just so glad you’ve simplified the system so everyone knows the true value of the results… slightly tongue in cheek.’

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Had Joris been writing a few days earlier, he might also have asked why the British Ambassador had to tell the British Foreign Secretary to shut up when he started quoting Kipling in that temple in Myanmar. Was it because Boris Johnson didn’t understand just how offensive it was for him to recite a poem that mocked reverence to a statue of the Buddha, and reminisced about a British soldier kissing a Burmese girl (too young to be called a woman), or because he supports Rudyard Kipling’s British imperialist values? For Kipling, ‘East of Suez’ was where you could find relief from both the English weather and English morality (hence the girls). Boris Johnson’s imperialist stunt is unfortunately indicative of a wider issue. Almost two centuries ago, sometime around 1805, the artist James Gillray drew a cartoon of William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte desperately attempting to carve up the world, represented as a plum pudding (Figure 4.4).

Routes to Rejoin by Stay European

Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, lockdown, Rishi Sunak

But it is time to vote with your head as well as your heart, John Major, Guardian, 6 December 2019 Anna Soubry on Conservative policies under Boris Johnson, BBC News, 15 July 2021 Millions in UK face disenfranchisement under voter ID plans, Guardian, 4 July 2021 Electoral Commission to investigate Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat renovations, 28 April 2021 Parties call for inquiry into Boris Johnson’s ‘failure to be honest’, Guardian, 19 April 2021 Electoral Commission to be stripped of power to prosecute after probe into Boris Johnson’s flat makeover, Independent, 18 June 2021 We lost the Brexit fight – now we must listen to voters, Ed Davey urges Lib Dems, Observer, 26 September 2020 96 Lib Dems ‘very pro-European’ but ‘not a rejoin party’ – Ed Davey, New European, 18 January 2021 Chapter 7 Europe is leaving a light on for Scotland, SNP, snp.org Tusk: EU would be enthusiastic if Scotland applied to rejoin, Guardian, 2 February 2020 The EU must welcome an independent Scotland, Letters, Guardian, 29 April 2021 Irish reunification, Institute for Government, 18 June 2019 FactFind: How could a border poll happen?

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Naomi Long of the cross-community Alliance Party said: “They denied the existence of borders, even as those borders were being erected. I think that that dishonesty, and the lack of clarity around these issues has contributed to a sense of anger in parts of our community.” On an Irish Sea border, Theresa May said “No UK prime 20 minister could ever agree to it.” But in the end Boris Johnson did agree to exactly that. He appears to have taken a similar position to his then-adviser Dominic Cummings, who allegedly once said that he doesn’t care if Northern Ireland “falls into the fucking sea”. Yet whatever the UK’s position, the EU – heavily aware of its obligations to member state Ireland and never cavalier with peace processes – is not so irresponsible.

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Long term, the only realistic alternative to that position is Irish reunification (see chapter 7). Dealing with dishonesty Here’s a dilemma: how do you do a deal with someone who you know will turn around shortly afterwards and try to break their word? That is the problem the EU faced as they negotiated the Brexit deal with Boris Johnson’s government. To add to the initial lies of the referendum, the government had gone into the 2019 general election with a new fraud, the ‘oven-ready deal’. For this to work, they had to act like Brexit had no significant problems left to resolve. They made it screamingly obvious that their intention was to sign a deal, almost regardless of what it said, in order to ‘get Brexit done’ and then try to wriggle out of it later.

The Politics of Pain by Fintan O'Toole

banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, classic study, colonial rule, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, full employment, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Suez crisis 1956, tech billionaire

, The Times, 14 June 1996, p. 20. 6Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope, Picador, London, 2012, p. 4. 7George Orwell, ‘The English People’, in Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 610. 8Thompson’s essay is transcribed at https://againstreactionblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/going-into-europe-an-essay-by-ep-thompson-1975/ 9‘Eurobeer Menace’, Daily Mirror, 25 June 1973. 10‘Your Shopping Basket and the Market’, Daily Mirror, 30 May 1975. 11Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 514. 12‘That Tory “have cake and eat it” Brexit strategy explained in all its humiliating glory’, by Dan Bloom, Daily Mirror, 29 November 2016. 13‘We’ll Have Our Cake and Eat It’, by Tom Newton-Dunn, Sun, 1 October 2016. 14‘Boris Johnson’s top 50 quotes’, by Alice Audley, Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2014. 15Stanley Johnson, Stanley, I Resume: Further Recollections of an Exuberant Life, Biteback, London, 2014. 16Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 505. 17‘Boris in row over Jamie remarks’, BBC News, 3 October 2006. 18Robin Young, ‘MEPs rally to defend flavoured crisps’, The Times, 29 April 1991, p. 2. 19‘The nasty taste of Brussels directives’, Daily Mail, 30 April 1991. 20‘I’m no longer Nasty, but please stop lying about Nice by Boris Johnson’, Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2002. 21Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, pp. 218–19. 22Ibid., p. 37. 23‘Great-uncle Ernest Thesiger’s army camp’, letter by John Thesiger, Guardian, 27 April 2014. 24Edward St Aubyn, Bad News, Picador, London, 2012, p. 41. 25Weight, Patriots, p. 724. 26‘Hunger for beef is a part of British pride’, by Ross Benson, Daily Express, 30 March 1996, p. 11. 27Christopher Hope, Daily Telegraph, 5 June 2018. 28Jacob Rees-Mogg, ‘My nanny made me the man I am’, Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2014. 29Alan Bennett, Keep On Keeping On, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2016, p. 193. 30Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, p. 20. 31Nigel Farage, tweet, 9 November 2017. 32https://www.petebrown.net/2014/06/16/why-faragesfoaming-pint-is-testamen/ 33Farming for the next generation: Secretary of State Michael Gove sets out his vision on the future of our farming industry at the Oxford Farming Conference 2018, published by DEFRA, 5 January 2018. 34‘If your child is fat then you are a bad parent’, by Julia Hartley-Brewer, Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2015. 35Tower Hamlets Police @MPSTowerHam, tweet, 3.10 p.m., 20 February 2018. 36@GMPWhitefield, tweet, 10.49 p.m., 20 February 2018. 5.Sadopopulism 1Independent, 27 March 2017. 2Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Adventures of Boris Johnson, Simon & Schuster, London, pp. 111–12. 3‘Grundy Banned, Today team accused’, Guardian, 3 December 1976. 4Great Interviews of the 20th Century, Guardian booklet no. 8, 2007, p. 10.

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More strangely, those who led what was in effect a peaceful revolution in 2016, could not actually take power. The insurgent United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which, under its former leader Nigel Farage created the demand for the referendum, actually lost virtually all of its vote in 2017. The leading Brexiteers in the ruling Conservative Party – most notably Boris Johnson – were unable to assume control of government, leaving it instead to the lackluster Theresa May, who had played no significant role in the referendum. There is something both very odd and highly distinctive about this – a revolution at once triumphant and timid, boldly self-assertive in principle but in practice tentative and hesitant to the point, ultimately, of complete paralysis.

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In 1989, for example, the Bruges Group of anti-European Tories heard Professor Kenneth Minogue of the London School of Economics tell them that ‘the European institutions were attempting to create a European Union, in the tradition of the mediaeval popes, Charlemagne, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler’.11 The sleight of hand was not subtle: Hitler tried to unite Europe, so does the EU, therefore the EU is a Hitlerian project. But the lack of subtlety did not stop the trope from being used in the Brexit campaign: ‘Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this [unifying Europe], and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods,’ Boris Johnson told the Daily Telegraph on 15 May 2016, a month before the referendum. That Napoleon and ‘various people’ were not the point of the argument became clear in Johnson’s reiteration of the real point: that the EU was ‘pursuing a similar goal to Hitler in trying to create a powerful superstate’. While Harris was writing Fatherland in 1990, the British secretary of state for trade and industry, Nicholas Ridley, a close friend and ally of the prime minister Margaret Thatcher, told the Spectator that the European Monetary System being introduced by the EU was ‘all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe… I’m not against giving up sovereignty in principle, but not to this lot.

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott

Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, gig economy, global pandemic, high-speed rail, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, lockdown, nudge unit, open economy, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Skype, social distancing, zoonotic diseases

The Andrew Marr Show, BBC One, 12 April 2020. 2. ‘Boris Johnson and his “chino chancellor”’, Politico, 13 February 2020. 3. ‘Dominic Cummings said to be “writing budget” for Sajid Javid’, The Sunday Times, 19 January 2020. 4. ‘Why I broke with Boris Johnson’, New Statesman, 10 June 2020. 5. ‘“He’s a better ex than he was a husband”, says Boris Johnson’s ex-wife’, Evening Standard, 29 May 2012. 6. ‘The Boris I know: A loner who wants to be loved’, Mail on Sunday, 27 March 2016. 7. ‘Bonking Boris’, Sun, 7 September 2018. 8. ‘Boris Johnson: Police called to loud altercation at potential PM’s home’, Guardian, 21 June 2019. 9.

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, Dispatches, Channel 4, 3 June 2020. 4. ‘How the future PM, Boris Johnson, and NHS boss, Simon Stevens, formed an unlikely bond at Oxford’, Telegraph, 7 August 2019. 5. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’, Dispatches, Channel 4, 3 June 2020. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 10: Disaster 1. ‘Coronavirus crisis: Sickness, fear and now isolation for Boris Johnson’, The Sunday Times, 29 March 2020. 2. ‘NHS staff feel like “cannon fodder” over lack of coronavirus protection’, Guardian, 22 March 2020. 3. ‘“No surprise” Boris Johnson got coronavirus when he failed to “practise what he preached”, scientists say’, Evening Standard, 28 March 2020. 4.

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Italy was already in lockdown and infections were so widespread that Sileri had caught the virus himself. He rang Conte to tell him that he had just tested positive. ‘And he told me that he had spoken with Boris Johnson,’ recalls Sileri, ‘and that they had also talked about the situation in Italy. I remember he said, “He [Johnson] told me that he wants herd immunity.”’ Sileri thought this was foolhardy. ‘I said, “Look, right now I’m in bed with a fever. But this isn’t a normal influenza. It’s something more.” I remember that after hanging up I said to myself, “Today, I hope Boris Johnson goes for a lockdown.”’11 It was also claimed that Hancock discussed herd immunity with Italy’s representative during a conference call between the G7 countries.

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain by William Davies

Airbnb, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, centre right, Chelsea Manning, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, credit crunch, data science, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, fake news, family office, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, ghettoisation, gig economy, global pandemic, global village, illegal immigration, Internet of things, Jeremy Corbyn, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, liberal capitalism, loadsamoney, London Interbank Offered Rate, mass immigration, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Northern Rock, old-boy network, post-truth, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, prediction markets, quantitative easing, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, web of trust, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

But until some of the political representatives of that 70 per cent construct some kind of coalition, and identify the language and overlapping policies that it shares (in spite of its deep heterogeneity), then the alliance of the nostalgic rentiers will succeed. The Johnson Press Over the course of Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign, Britain has been treated to a fresh media spectacle, marking a new low in the slow decline of an autonomous press. The Daily Telegraph, which has employed Boris Johnson off and on for over thirty years, and currently pays him £275,000 a year as a columnist, has put its full editorial and journalistic resource behind his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore prime minister.

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, openDemocracy (30 June 2016); ‘The Crisis of Statistical Fact’, see ‘How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next’, Guardian (19 January 2017); ‘Strong and Stable’ see ‘Theresa May’s vapid vision for a one-party state’, New York Times (11 May 2017). Chapter 2: ‘The Corbyn Shock’ see ‘Reasons for Corbyn’, London Review of Books (13 July 2017); ‘The Riddle of Tory Brexitism’ see ‘What are they after?’, London Review of Books (8 March 2018); ‘The Revenge of Sovereignty on Government’ see ‘Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Rise of Radical Incompetence’, New York Times (13 July 2018); ‘The Lure of Exit’ see ‘Leave, and leave again’, London Review of Books (7 February 2019); ‘The Demise of Liberal Elites’ see ‘Why we stopped trusting elites’, Guardian (29 November 2019); ‘Comedy or Demagoguery’ see ‘The funny side of politics’, openDemocracy (9 April 2019).

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, Guardian (19 September 2019); ‘Mutations of Leadership’ see ‘How to be prime minister’, London Review of Books (26 September 2019); ‘The Party of Resentment’ see ‘The Tories have lost their ideology. Now they are merely the party of resentment’, Guardian (1 October 2019); ‘The Berlusconification of Britain’ see ‘How Boris Johnson and Brexit are Berlusconifying Britain’, Guardian (4 December 2019); ‘The Johnson Victory’ see ‘For Johnson’s Tories, the collapse of public trust isn’t a problem – it’s an opportunity’, Guardian (13 December 2019). All rights reserved The moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-090-7 ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-101-0 (US EBK) ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-100-3 (UK EBK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Fournier by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays Contents Introduction 1.

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe by Denis MacShane

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, fixed income, Gini coefficient, greed is good, illegal immigration, information security, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low cost airline, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, post-truth, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reshoring, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Thales and the olive presses, trade liberalization, transaction costs, women in the workforce

6 THERESA MAY: HOW MUCH BREXIT DOES SHE REALLY WANT? Every EU leader from Angela Merkel downwards has said flatly that the UK cannot have its gateau and eat it. Will Boris Johnson, who wrote of a ‘Gestapo-controlled Nazi EU’, really sway Angela Merkel and her ministers? Will Boris Johnson’s crude anti-German insults charm the strongly pro-EU German politicians from the Social Democrat Party, who chose as their champion for the 2017 federal elections the passionately pro-EU politician Martin Schulz? Will demands from Boris Johnson and the other Germanophobe Tories persuade the pro-EU Free Democratic Party or even those in the anti-Muslim, racist Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) that they should tear up their values and common rule book to appease UKIP and anti-Europeans in the British government?

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They did much better with the unambiguously pro-EU manifesto than Labour candidates in the Midlands and the North where MPs stood on a manifesto which supported immigration controls and in some cases lost their seats. It should not be forgotten that in June last year there was a clear majority of Remain MPs in the Commons even if the BBC and the press bigged up the loudmouthed anti-Europeans like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith, Andrea Leadsom and David Davis. MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (other than Unionist supremacists) were all opposed to amputating Britain from Europe. So too were most Labour MPs and more than half of Conservative MPs. In nominal terms there is no election until 2022 though given the absence of a majority for the Conservatives the possibility of an earlier election remains a likely possibility.

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In fact it has been a core argument of Brexit anti-Europeans that a British rupture with the EU would be the first move in the collapse of European integration, such as has been in place since 1945 and given effect by a succession of sovereignty-sharing treaties with their common rule book and enforcement mechanisms. This was put with startling arrogance by Boris Johnson in a speech just before the referendum when he said English nationalist Brexit demagogues and populists were ‘speaking for hundreds of millions across Europe who agree with us but who currently have no voice’. This is ‘nonsense on stilts’, to paraphrase Jeremy Bentham. Anti-Europeanism politics is strong and has been so since the 1950s, fuelled by extremist ideologues of both left and right.

Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story by Jeremy Farrar, Anjana Ahuja

"World Economic Forum" Davos, bioinformatics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, dual-use technology, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, machine translation, nudge unit, open economy, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, side project, social distancing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, zoonotic diseases

Both were hospitalised in Newcastle, in north-east England, on 31 January as a precaution and discharged after a mild illness. That friction, between waiting and wading in, led to a palpable tension between Patrick and Chris in the early weeks of 2020, particularly given the apparent absence of political leadership in that period. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, did not attend the first five COBR meetings on coronavirus in January and February 2020. Chris, though, had more experience than Patrick of operating in political circles: he was in government in 2009, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. It was projected to lead to 65,000 deaths; in the event, there were fewer than 300.

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It is distinct from suppression, which means trying to stop spread in the first place. Mitigation and suppression are captured distinctly in epidemiological modelling: suppression indicates a strategy to keep R below 1, to shrink the epidemic; in mitigation, R can rise above 1, representing a spreading epidemic. Boris Johnson certainly did not sound as if he wanted to stop the epidemic in its tracks. He was clear to the nation, as he presented the Coronavirus Action Plan, that ‘for the vast majority of the people of this country, we should be going about our business as usual’. John was surprised at the announcement: ‘I went back to the minutes to see if we had ever properly discussed that four-phase strategy.

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On the same day, he told BBC News: ‘There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows, as we think it probably will do, where you’ll want to cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so they basically don’t catch the disease, and by the time they come out of their cocooning herd immunity’s been achieved in the rest of the population.’ This was never the view of SAGE. The day after, Boris Johnson told breakfast television that one possible strategy was ‘perhaps to take [the virus] on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease … to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures’. Patrick gave an interview in which he said: ‘Our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it.’

Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain by Robert Verkaik

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alistair Cooke, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Brixton riot, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, G4S, gender pay gap, God and Mammon, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Livingstone, I presume, loadsamoney, mega-rich, Neil Kinnock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Piers Corbyn, place-making, plutocrats, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, school vouchers, Stephen Fry, Steve Bannon, Suez crisis 1956, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, trade route, traveling salesman, unpaid internship

When David Cameron announced he was resigning from parliament because he considered himself a ‘distraction’, the veil was lifted. The former member for Witney returned to his London club and the grouse moor. His friend and chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, capitalised on his position by taking six jobs, including the editorship of a national newspaper. They left Boris Johnson behind in charge of the country’s foreign affairs at a critical moment in the nation’s history. An Eton education teaches bombast, bluster and buffoonery. All harmless in the debating chambers of parliament and on TV game shows, but in the real world, where real lives are at stake, such playfulness can be catastrophic.

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The army, into which many of them went, was an institution on the fringes of English society and was not the nation in arms, as in France, or the embodiment of state as in Prussia.’13 Shrosbree argues that ‘men from the public schools formed a political elite whose membership was not dependent on knowledge, or ability, or democratic approval, but was buttressed and kept in place by a restrictive educational system, in which any equality of opportunity was stifled by the classical requirements of the public school system… The classics fulfilled the same sociological function in Victorian England as calligraphy in ancient China – a device to regulate and limit entry into a governing élite.’14 This, of course, explains why politicians like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg have such a fondness for Roman and Greek historians. Public schools had become specialists at turning out princes and prime ministers but not much else. According to David Turner, ‘Repeat custom from the families of Britain’s tiny political class, and those desirous of breaking into it, was not enough to prevent a marked slide in the already small number of boys entering the old public schools.’15 Their enterprise had become so niche that some of the best-known had come close to extinction.

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May’s chief adviser, Nick Timothy, responsible for putting the flesh on so much post-Cameron policy, stepped down from his post and any plans for a radical overhaul of the public schools disappeared with him. For the public schools, the rich irony was that they had been effectively saved from a radical education reform programme by their old enemy. PART TWO BAD EDUCATION Predicting his own (and David Cameron’s) future political success in 1988, Boris Johnson candidly described the realpolitik of winning votes to become president of the Oxford Union, long seen as a birthing pool for the nation’s politicians. In The Oxford Myth, a collection of essays edited by his sister Rachel, Johnson says the ‘most natural’ politicians come from ‘the Establishment’.

This Land: The Struggle for the Left by Owen Jones

Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Brexit referendum, call centre, capitalist realism, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, European colonialism, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Floyd, gig economy, green new deal, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, lockdown, market fundamentalism, Naomi Klein, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, open borders, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent control, short selling, The Spirit Level, War on Poverty

With May’s impending departure, the Tories had a clear route back, in the shape of front-runner Boris Johnson, whose Brexit populism would make large inroads into the 26 per cent of the vote gained by the Brexit Party.3 The Tories, in other words, were altering course dramatically in the wake of the EU election drubbing; Labour was not. As James Schneider put it to me: ‘We didn’t have an agreed position to deal with Brexit, and if you can’t deal with Brexit, how do you deal with Johnson?’ On 23 July, in London’s Queen Elizabeth Centre, the Conservative leadership contest reached its inevitable conclusion: Boris Johnson was proclaimed leader and Britain’s new prime minister.

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He told me he found a half-empty office, dotted with workaholic aides staying late into the night, desultory staffers who drifted in and clocked off at 5 p.m. and a miasma of bad morale. All this, when Boris Johnson had just become prime minister. ‘It did not feel like a place fighting for its survival and future,’ the aide tells me. One senior member of staff, he recalls, would get drunk every night at conference and struggled through a terrible hangover each day. Meanwhile, with Parliament deadlocked and Boris Johnson desperate to consolidate his position with a parliamentary majority, the spectre of another general election began to loom. If, as seemed increasingly likely, an election was going to happen later in the autumn, then Labour’s conference that September was realistically the party’s last chance to showcase itself to an increasingly sceptical public.

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I don’t want to, I resent it, and I work every day in some small way to bring forward the end of his tenure in office. Something, however small it may be – an email, a phone call or a meeting I convene – every day I try to do something to save the Labour Party from his leadership. – Peter Mandelson Introduction – A Nation in Turmoil ‘This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain.’ So proclaimed Boris Johnson’s Twitter account two days into 2020, accompanied by a picture of the British prime minister, thumbs up, suited and booted, conveying an air of workmanlike determination, ready to forge a new buccaneering post-Brexit Britain. Four months later, thousands of Britons were dead, the nation was in lockdown, the economy in collapse, unprecedented social upheaval beckoned, and Johnson was in intensive care.

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera

Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, cognitive dissonance, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Etonian, European colonialism, food miles, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Neil Armstrong, period drama, phenotype, Rishi Sunak, school choice, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Shamima Begum, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce

Elsewhere, the phrase ‘too clever by half’ is in common currency; Michael Gove famously stated when campaigning for Brexit that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’; during the coronavirus crisis a BBC Newsnight correspondent reported a ‘senior Tory’ calling opposition leader Keir Starmer a ‘smartypants’, as if, as Twitter wag @TobyonTV put it, ‘having someone smart in a position of responsibility is less preferable to someone who has been notoriously pantless’; Boris Johnson once dismissed his predecessor David Cameron in a leaked Cabinet memo with the insult ‘girly swot’; and while he himself managed a 2:1 at Oxford, Johnson became famous as a result of a series of media appearances where he wilfully played the role of a bumbling upper-class twit. Matthew Parris recently observed that ‘Regrettably, [Boris] Johnson has an Etonian distrust of intellect among colleagues,’ but might it be more accurate to say that Johnson displays an imperial distrust of cleverness, instilled in him at Eton?

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., Little, Brown, 1844–75, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000333733 Banerjea, Surendranath, A Nation in Making: Being the Reminiscences of Fifty Years of Public Life, Oxford University Press, 1925 Bank, Andrew, ‘Of “Native Skulls” and Noble Caucasians: Phrenology in Colonial South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 1996, 22:3, 387–403, https://www.jstor.org/stable/i324968 Barczewski, Stephanie, Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930: Studies in Imperialism, Manchester University Press, 2014 Barczewski, Stephanie, Heroic Failure and the British, Yale University Press, 2016 Barrie, Joshua, ‘How taxpayers were still paying for British slave trade nearly 200 years later’, Mirror, 13/02/2018, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/taxpayers-still-paying-british-slave-12019829 Barringer, Tim, and Flynn, Tom, Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, Routledge, 1998 Bartlett, Nicola, ‘Boris Johnson defends appointing aide who attacked “grievance culture” to race review role’, Mirror, 17/06/2020, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-defends-appointing-aide-22206451 Barton, Gregory, Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 Barua, Pradeep, ‘Inventing Race: The British and India’s Martial Races’, Historian 1995, 58:1, 107–16, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24449614 Bates, Crispin, Subalterns and Raj: South Asia since 1600, Routledge, 2013 Baxter, Peter, Gandhi, Smuts and Race in the British Empire of Passive and Violent Resistance, Pen & Sword History, 2017 Bayly, C.

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Investor returns to Indian railway companies in the age of high imperialism’, Journal of Institutional Economics 2019, 15:5, 751–75, https://econpapers.repec.org/article/cupjinsec/v_3a15_3ay_3a2019_3ai_3a05_3ap_3a751-774_5f00.htm Booth, Martin, ‘Anti-Slavery Day Marked by New Artwork in Front of Edward Colston Statue’, B24/7, 18/10/2018, https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/anti-slavery-day-marked-by-new-artwork-in-front-of-edward-colston-statue/ ‘Boris Johnson’s conference speech: Full text’, Spectator, 2/10/2016, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-boris-johnson-s-conference-speech Bowen, H. V., The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833, Cambridge University Press, 2006 Bowlby, Chris, ‘The Palace of Shame that Makes China Angry’, BBC News, 2/02/2015, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30810596 Boxall, Megan, ‘Lessons from history: “Prohibition makes anything precious”’, Investors’ Chronicle, 14/08/2020 Bradbury, Rosie, ‘Fact check: Jan Smuts portrait and bust were not “toppled” by Cambridge students’, Varsity, 6/08/2018, https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/15971 Bradshaw, Tim, Neville, Sarah, and Warrell, Helen, ‘NHS tracing app in question as experts assess Google–Apple model’, Financial Times, 6/05/2020, https://www.ft.com/content/d44beb06-5e3e-434f-a3a0-f806ce06576c Breckenridge, Carol A., ‘The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World Fairs’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 1989, 31:2, 195–216, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/aesthetics-and-politics-of-colonial-collecting-india-at-world-fairs/173A0D542B56EE2124E1CC9E7F798E1B Bremner, Alex, ‘“Some Imperial Institute”: Architecture, Symbolism, and the Ideal of Empire in Late Victorian Britain, 1887–93’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 2003, 62:1, 50–73, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3655083?

Them and Us: How Immigrants and Locals Can Thrive Together by Philippe Legrain

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, Chelsea Manning, clean tech, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, digital divide, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, future of work, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, job automation, Jony Ive, labour market flexibility, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, moral hazard, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open borders, open immigration, postnationalism / post nation state, purchasing power parity, remote working, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, WeWork, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

download=true 15 ‘Far-right Sweden Democrats top opinion poll in historic shift’, The Local, 15 November 2019. https://www.thelocal.se/20191115/sweden-democrats-now-swedens-biggest-party-historic-poll 16 John Sides, ‘Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016’, Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, June 2017. https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/race-religion-immigration-2016 17 ‘How Viktor Orban hollowed out Hungary’s democracy’, The Economist, 29 August 2019. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/08/29/how-viktor-orban-hollowed-out-hungarys-democracy 18 May Bulman, ‘Boris Johnson faces backlash and claims of racism after saying migrants should not “treat UK as their own”’, Independent, 9 December 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-johnson-eu-migrants-immigration-britain-general-election-a9238941.html 19 ‘Trump’s Executive Order Limiting Immigration: What You Need to Know’, Boundless, 23 April 2020. https://www.boundless.com/blog/donald-trump-suspends-us-immigration/ 20 Nicola Bartlett, ‘Theresa May boasted as home secretary that she would “deport first and hear appeals later”’, Mirror, 20 April 2018. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-boasted-home-secretary-would-12398544 21 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448?

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Executive Order 13769’, Federal Register, 27 January 2017. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/01/2017-02281/protecting-the-nation-from-foreign-terrorist-entry-into-the-united-states 23 Zachary Wolf, ‘Yes, Obama deported more people than Trump but context is everything’, CNN, 13 July 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/13/politics/obama-trump-deportations-illegal-immigration/index.html 24 Henry Samuel, ‘Nicolas Sarkozy says immigrants must accept “your ancestors are the Gauls”’, Telegraph, 20 September 2016. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/20/nicolas-sarkozy-says-immigrants-should-live-like-the-french/ 25 Matthias Galante, ‘Presidential hopeful Fillon says France needs immigration quotas’, Reuters, 11 January 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-fillon-immigration-idUSKBN14V0TN 26 Yonette Joseph, ‘In Their Own Words: Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron’, New York Times, 5 May 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen-quotes.html 27 William Booth, Karla Adam and Christine Spolar, ‘Boris Johnson praises immigrant nurses who saved his life, as Britain’s NHS becomes a rallying cry’, Washington Post, 13 April 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/boris-johnson-nurses-nhs/2020/04/13/51498d34-7bfa-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html 28 Philippe Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, Abacus, 2007. 29 Open Political Economy Network’s website is http://www.opennetwork.net and on Twitter it is @open2progress. 30 Robert Guest, ‘Why people should leave the countryside’, The Economist, 14 November 2019. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/11/14why-people-should-leave-the-countryside 1 Why is Immigration So Unpopular?

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Jonathan Wadsworth, Swati Dhingra, Gianmarco Ottaviano and John Van Reenen, ‘Brexit and the Impact of Immigration on the UK’, Centre for Economic Performance Brexit Analysis 5, LSE, 2016 http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit05.pdf 66 Home Office, ‘The UK’s points-based immigration system: policy statement’, 19 February 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-policy-statement/the-uks-points-based-immigration-system-policy-statement 67 Philippe Legrain, ‘Boris Johnson’s New Immigration Rules Will Harm Britain’s Economy’. Foreign Policy, 21 February 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/21/boris-johnsons-new-immigration-rules-will-harm-britains-economy/ 68 Subclass 189 69 Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, ‘Points table for Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189)’. Accessed on 23 January 2020 at https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-independent-189/points-table 70 Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, ‘SkillSelect.

Shadows of Empire: The Anglosphere in British Politics by Michael Kenny, Nick Pearce

battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, colonial rule, corporate governance, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, global reserve currency, imperial preference, informal economy, invention of the telegraph, Khartoum Gordon, labour mobility, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Nixon shock, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Steve Bannon, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, Washington Consensus

Taylor, Empire Building: Unity of the English Speaking Races of the World (Hobart, Australia: The Mercury, 1913). 22  Clarke, Mr Churchill's Profession. 23  Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015). 24  Gilbert, Churchill and America, pp. 52, 102. 25  Ibid., p. 143. 26  Felix Klos, ‘Boris Johnson's abuse of Churchill’, History Today, 1 June 2017; www.historytoday.com/felix-klos/boris-johnsons-abuse-churchill. See also Klos, Churchill on Europe: The Untold Story of Churchill's European Project (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017). 27  Stephen Kinnock, ‘Brexit and Churchill's “three majestic circles” ’, Demos Quarterly, 9 May 2016; https://quarterly.demos.co.uk/article/issue-9/brexit-churchill-majestic-circles/. 28  Churchill, Winston Churchill's 9 October 1948 Speech to the 69th Annual Conservative Party Conference published in the Report of the Proceedings (London: National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, 1948). 29  See, for instance, Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). 30  Ramsden, Man of the Century, p. 313. 31  Antoine Capet, ‘Review of Felix Klos's Churchill on Europe: The Untold Story of Churchill's European Project’, Cercles, www.cercles.com/review/r80/Klos.html.

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., p. 95. 15  Perry Anderson, ‘American foreign policy and its thinkers’, New Left Review, no. 83 (2013) p. 122 [special issue]. 16  The UKIP Manifesto 2015, www.ukip.org/manifesto2015. 17  William Hague, ‘Britain and Australia: making the most of global opportunity’, John Howard Lecture, 17 January 2013, www.menziesrc.org/images/Latest_News/PDF/Britain_and_Australia__making_the_most_of_global_opportunity1.pdf. 18  Boris Johnson, ‘The Aussies are just like us, so let's stop kicking them out’, The Telegraph, 25 August 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10265619/The-Aussies-are-just-like-us-so-lets-stop-kicking-them-out.html. 19  Boris Johnson, Speech at Bloomberg in response to the receipt of Dr Gerard Lyons's publication of ‘The Europe report: a win–win situation’, 6 August 2014, www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/bj-europe-speech.pdf. 20  Tony Abbott, Address to Queen's College, Oxford University, 14 December 2012, www.australiantimes.co.uk/tony-abbott-address-to-queens-college-oxford-university/. 21  See, for example, Owen Paterson, ‘The Anglosphere, trade and international security’, speech to the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, 25 March 2015, www.uk2020.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Anglosphere-Trade-and-International-Security-UK-2020-25.03.2015-FINAL.pdf. 22  Shashi Parulekar and Joel Kotkin, ‘The state of the Anglosphere’, City Journal (winter 2012), www.city-journal.org/html/state-anglosphere-13447.html. 23  Daniel Hannan, Why America Must Not Follow Europe (New York: Encounter Books, 2011). 7 Brexit: The Anglosphere Triumphant?

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This renewal of interest in his thinking reflects his iconic status among Conservatives in the years after his death and also says much about the desire for legitimation on a decision of crucial national importance. The appearance in mainstream Conservative circles, from 2010, of a reinvigorated version of the Anglosphere idea was a particular spur to this recent interest. This dynamic was taken to somewhat absurd lengths by Boris Johnson MP, whose hagiographic account of Churchill was widely viewed as an artless attempt to align himself with the wartime hero's ‘brand’.23 Whether today's sceptics can credibly claim Churchill as progenitor and inspiration is the source of much disagreement among contemporary historians. Some of his best-known pronouncements on this issue were offered in the unique circumstances of the 1940s, yet references to a United States of Europe pepper his speeches and writings from a very early stage in his life and were typically framed as compatible with some kind of alliance of the English-speaking peoples.

Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic by Rachel Clarke

Airbnb, Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disruptive innovation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, social distancing, zero-sum game

The entire UK population is being treated, en masse, to two eminent doctors’ best bedside manner – and how the country has been aching for it. I can relax, I believe. Someone else has got this. Smarter, wiser, far more experienced doctors than me. It is going to be OK now. At one point in the press conference, my relief briefly falters. Boris Johnson, in replying to a journalist’s question, reassures him that everything will be fine because ‘We have a fantastic health service and it is well capable of handling the most tremendous pressures, as everyone knows.’ I cannot help but wince at this. We are indeed depressingly familiar with the pressures under which the NHS delivers care.

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In times of uncertainty, we rely, do we not, on our leaders’ lead? The Prime Minister has only recently chosen to spend a Saturday afternoon watching the England v. Wales Six Nations international, alongside 82,000 other rugby fans crammed into the stands at Twickenham. It generates approving headlines from some of the press – ‘Boris Johnson Braves Coronavirus Outbreak with Pregnant Fiancée to Support England’ in the Daily Express, for example – but many doctors, myself among them, are distraught at the symbolic defiance. Official medical guidance not to shake each other’s hands and keep a cautious distance means nothing when the PM himself ignores it.

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Even intensive care, in the end, is only a temporary holding measure, a means of supporting failing organs until – we hope – the body eventually recovers from the damage the virus has inflicted. I cannot help but fear that the government is pinning everything on an as-yet non-existent science. That evening, Boris Johnson appears once more in Downing Street, flanked by his Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, and Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance. Gone is the Prime Minister’s former bonhomie. He wears his gravity awkwardly, like an ill-fitting suit. This is the ‘worst public health crisis for a generation’, he tells us.

Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?: The Facts About Britain's Bitter Divorce From Europe 2016 by Ian Dunt

Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, energy security, Jeremy Corbyn, low skilled workers, non-tariff barriers, open borders, Silicon Valley, UNCLOS, UNCLOS

(www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/03/ government-faces-worldwide-hunt-for-trade-negotiators-experts-wa/) Almost as soon as this structure was set up, divisions emerged. Boris Johnson and Liam Fox clashed after the trade secretary tried to poach some of his colleague’s remit, forcing the prime minister to break away from her holiday to scold them both. (http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/theresa-may-wont-surprised-liam-fox-boris-johnson-already-battling/) What is the single market? After all, what was the point of ensuring qualifications for services like dentistry or hairdressing were recognised all over the Continent if people couldn’t travel to sell them?

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And that’s why it was so jaw-droppingly unhelpful when Nigel Farage headed to the European Parliament after the Brexit vote with a mean-spirited victory speech in which he mocked MEPs: ‘You’re not laughing now, are you?’ The UKIP leader is at least a known quantity and outside of government. But the three Brexit ministers – Liam Fox, David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – all have a history of tub-thumping eurosceptic rhetoric. As soon as he was appointed, Fox was forecasting that the European Union would ‘sacrifice at least one generation of young Europeans on the altar of the single currency’, then ‘rip out the social fabric from so much of Europe’ before ‘imploding’.

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At least initially, few fancied dedicating a core part of their career to delivering something they didn’t support. The third side of the triangle was the Foreign Office, which has long been considered the home of the most capable British civil servants. But its role in Brexit was mercurial. What would it really be doing? The fact that Boris Johnson was put in charge surprised many. Was he being put out to pasture in foreign fields, or did the prime minister envisage him sweet talking important world figures ahead of detailed negotiating work? It was unclear. Cross-departmental coordination would be handled by the Cabinet Office. May made herself chair of three Cabinet Office committees covering every aspect of Brexit (The Economy and Industrial Strategy, International Trade, and Exiting the European Union), the last of which she packed with die-hard Brexiters alongside a few moderates.

Journey to Crossrail by Stephen Halliday

active transport: walking or cycling, Ada Lovelace, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Charles Babbage, congestion charging, Crossrail, wikimedia commons

The first shaft for the construction of the tunnels was sunk at Canary Wharf on 15 May 2009 in the presence of Transport Secretary Lord Adonis and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and the tunnelling was finished at Farringdon on 23 May 2015 when the TBM Victoria broke into the eastern ticket hall of Farringdon’s new station. The end of tunnelling was officially acknowledged on 4 June 2015 in the presence of Prime Minister David Cameron, with Boris Johnson once again in attendance as Mayor. On 23 February 2016 the Queen attended a ceremony at the newly completed Bond Street station and unveiled a plaque revealing that, from the time it enters service in autumn 2019, the line will be known as the Elizabeth Line, with a London Transport roundel and bar to match.

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The line will be operated by MTR Corporation (Crossrail) Ltd on behalf of Transport for London, which is also responsible, under the Mayor of London, for the London Underground, the London bus services, taxis, river transport, the Docklands Light Railway and the suburban rail routes into the capital known as London Overground. It also administers the congestion charge and the so-called Boris Bikes (actually the brainchild of Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson’s predecessor as Mayor), which are now sponsored by Santander. Services will begin from the central area in December 2018 and the entire system, from Reading and Heathrow to Shenfield and the rebuilt Abbey Wood station, is expected to be in operation by December 2019. The so-called Boris bikes, which were actually conceived by Boris Johnson’s predecessor as Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, as a low-tech, pollution-free answer to London’s congested streets. Now sponsored by Santander.

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The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea also campaigned for a station on the former site of the Kensal Gasworks near Ladbroke Grove, possibly called Portobello station, believing that it would regenerate an ill-favoured area in the north of that wealthy borough which later suffered the tragic Grenfell Tower fire. Boris Johnson was a strong advocate, arguing that it would generate 5,000 new homes and 2,000 jobs, but in 2013 Transport for London reached the view that it was not financially feasible and Sadiq Khan, Boris Johnson’s successor, did not share his enthusiasm. The Crossrail Route as finally determined after much debate. Brunel’s Paddington station, now joined by Crossrail’s. (Elahuguet via Wikimedia Commons CC SA 1.0) Portobello Road is home to a famous street market but not, despite its best efforts, to a Crossrail station.

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

Admiral Zheng, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, defund the police, Deng Xiaoping, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, George Floyd, global pandemic, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeremy Corbyn, Jones Act, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, McMansion, military-industrial complex, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parkinson's law, pensions crisis, QR code, rent control, Rishi Sunak, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, trade route, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Washington Consensus

The help we are able to get is from the East.”5 When the Floyd protests erupted, with four in five Americans thinking their country was “spiraling out of control,” the Chinese sarcastically compared protesters in Minneapolis and other cities to the pro-democracy ones in Hong Kong.6 On the last day of June, with American officials confessing that the virus was “going in the wrong direction,” Boris Johnson having to re-lockdown the city of Leicester, and Emmanuel Macron preparing to sack his entire government in Paris, China felt confident enough to impose a harsh new security law on Hong Kong. By then, a virus that in January had looked as if it might be “China’s Chernobyl” looked more like the West’s Waterloo.

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He has made clear, in his repeated conversations with dictators, that human rights are not a priority. At home, populists have generally ducked the challenge of reviving the Western state. There are certainly reformers in their midst. The White House contains a small group of deregulators who have cut the number of pages in the Federal Register from its record under Obama. Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, sees the break with Europe as merely the first stage of bureaucracy-slaying that will eventually create a “meritocratic technopolis.” But these would-be reformers look outnumbered. For every Brexiteer who wants to build a Singapore-on-Thames, there are many more who want their newly independent state to protect them against globalization—and Johnson seems intent on building a bigger state for them.

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The parties of the left in particular groomed a succession of working-class leaders, such as Ernest Bevin, who became Britain’s greatest postwar foreign secretary despite leaving school at eleven to work as a draper’s boy. Now long-established parties such as France’s Socialists and Greece’s Pasok are more or less disappearing. Boris Johnson leads a party of 150,000 Tories; his hero Winston Churchill could call on three million. More people vote in celebrity talent shows than in many elections. This helps explain populism, but it also explains why, in normal times, politics is the preserve of a narrow class who regard politics more as a profession than a calling: politicians who have had their eye on a seat since university, if not before, and a host of other careerists (pollsters, spin doctors, election agents, speech writers, psephologists, and the rest).

The Lost Decade: 2010–2020, and What Lies Ahead for Britain by Polly Toynbee, David Walker

banking crisis, battle of ideas, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, call centre, car-free, centre right, collective bargaining, congestion charging, corporate governance, crony capitalism, Crossrail, David Attenborough, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, energy transition, Etonian, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, G4S, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Large Hadron Collider, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, moral panic, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, pension reform, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, quantitative easing, Right to Buy, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, smart meter, Uber for X, ultra-processed food, urban renewal, working-age population

About the Author Copyright Introduction The Tory triumph in the 2019 general election, the fourth election within ten years, bookends their assumption of power in 2010, but for many it means that the pain and dismay of the lost decade from 2010 to 2020 will extend long into the 2020s. During the campaign, Boris Johnson grandly pronounced the end of austerity but said nothing about repairing the damage done; he was highly selective about which cuts might be partially restored and who would receive his largesse. The UK economy is in trouble, financial sustainability under threat. It may be only a matter of time before his government resorts, again, to slash and burn.

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Osborne himself was one of those who did very nicely, thank you, after being given a succession of handsomely rewarded jobs. As editor of the London Evening Standard, he first pursued a personal vendetta against his former boss, Theresa May, before returning the paper to Tory partisanship and savaging the Labour London mayor at every opportunity. His new boss was a pal of Boris Johnson’s who had sold part of the equity to the Saudis; the Standard slathered the new prime minister in treacle. The High Street Falls Low Median pay stood pat. An average worker’s total weekly pay fell in real terms from £525 in 2008 to £497 in 2019. As incomes idled and the use of contactless payments surged, people dealt with less physical cash.

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However much of a minority their electors were, the Tories exuded the bogus confidence that they owned, represented, were the backbone of England, if not Britain – a sociological absurdity that could never have been sustained if the media had been differently configured and the biases of the press matched voting preferences rather than owners’ prejudices. It’s important to see the continuities between Cameron and Boris Johnson, their easy assumption about this natural order and its fixed electoral props across England, north as well as south, where sufficient numbers would always back them, come what may (except May), in Witham, Tarporley, Aylesbury, Maidstone, Howden, Horncastle and scores of other places outside the cities.

How to Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again) by Nick Clegg

Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Jeremy Corbyn, low interest rates, offshore financial centre, sceptred isle, Snapchat, Steve Bannon

When I close my eyes and drag my mind back to those grim spring months of 2016, a red bus rolls into view and its infamous slogan blinks back at me once more: ‘We send the EU £350m every week. Let’s fund the NHS instead.’ I’m sure you remember it all too well. Not surprisingly, the promise of such riches for our National Health Service caught the public imagination. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and the other leading Leave campaigners regularly appeared in front of banners that repeated the claim. Even after the UK Statistics Authority pointed out that the figure ‘was misleading and undermines trust in official statistics’,21 the pledge remained plastered to the bus’s side.

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In part, the general-election result of June 2017 was a clear message from the electorate that it had grown tired of the long years of austerity. Despite numerous unanswered questions about Labour’s uncosted shopping list of promises, it is clear that many voters preferred Corbyn’s more optimistic pitch to the Conservative programme of further cost-cutting. Sensing the shift in mood, leading Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were quick to shed crocodile tears about the continuing restraints on public-sector wages. But the truth is that it is their determination to pull us out of the EU, and the consequences on inflation and prices, that have led to the new pressure on take-home pay. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, has admitted that nobody voted to leave the EU to make themselves poorer.

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A vote on 23rd June 2016, the Brexiteers insisted, was a chance to fight back against meddlesome Brussels bureaucrats and their pesky rules, regulations and red tape. Do you want your bananas to be bendy? Do you want to be free of EU rules determining the noise level of your Hoover? Do you want to rid Britain of intrusive EU regulations setting the maximum power for hairdryers? Then vote Leave. These were all examples given by Boris Johnson, when he attacked the EU because it wanted to ‘dictate to the British people’ how we live our lives. He famously urged voters to make 23rd June Britain’s ‘independence day’. The leading Brexiteers painted a bright future in which we could draw on our triumphant past – back to a glorious era when the Royal Yacht ruled the waves, Britain was a global, swashbuckling power and bluebirds sang merrily over the white cliffs of Dover.

The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again by Richard Horton

Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, cognitive bias, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, fake news, Future Shock, global pandemic, global village, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, lockdown, nowcasting, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Slavoj Žižek, social distancing, South China Sea, zoonotic diseases

The UK was slower than some of its European neighbours but eventually switched off its economy on 24 March. The British public already knew what was coming. They had begun to change their behaviour well before lockdown became official government policy. UK politicians were behind the public curve. On 27 March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that he had contracted the infection. The response in the US was predictably unpredictable. The first imported case was reported from Washington state on 21 January. President Trump initially called SARS-CoV-2 ‘the new hoax’. By 30 January, he was describing the epidemic as ‘pretty much under control’.

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From the last week in January, it took the UK government seven weeks to recognise the seriousness of COVID-19. It wasted the whole of February and most of March, when ministers should have been preparing the country for the arrival of a deadly new virus. Why? Inexplicably, medical and scientific advisers to the UK government ignored the warnings coming from China. Boris Johnson won a general election on 13 December 2019 on the promise that he would ‘get Brexit done’. Britain was leaving the European Union on 31 January, a day, the new prime minister said, that symbolised a moment for ‘national renewal and change’. On 26 February, less than a month after WHO had declared a PHEIC, he announced an integrated review of foreign policy, defence, security and international development.

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King’s argument for setting up a rival body to SAGE was that ensuring public trust in the scientific advice given to government demanded that those giving advice should not be dependent on the government.18 Too many members of the official SAGE were government employees. Astonishingly, the official SAGE allowed the participation of the architect of Brexit, Dominic Cummings, who had been appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as his chief political advisor. The official SAGE was impossibly compromised. This first meeting of an Independent SAGE set a new standard for science policymaking. The openness of the process, vigour of discussion, and identification of issues barely discussed by politicians injected much needed candour into public and political discussions about COVID-19.

We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent by Nesrine Malik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, cognitive dissonance, continuation of politics by other means, currency peg, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, feminist movement, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gender pay gap, gentrification, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, mass immigration, moral panic, Nate Silver, obamacare, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, payday loans, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, public intellectual, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Thomas L Friedman, transatlantic slave trade

v=XGNEZr11LFE [accessed on 25 July 2019] 103 ‘Right-wing media blogs as well as mainstream publications’: Claire Fox, ‘The dangers of illiberal liberalism’ (Economist, 17 August 2018), https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/08/17/the-dangers-of-illiberal-liberalism [accessed on 25 July 2019] 104 ‘… led to a spike in racist incidents’: Tell MAMA, ‘“Letterbox” insults against Muslim women spike in wake of Boris Johnson comments’ (Tell MAMA, 23 August 2018), https://tellmamauk.org/press/letterbox-insults-against-muslim-women-spike-in-wake-of-boris-johnson-comments/ [accessed on 25 July 2019] 104 ‘Deplorable to see’: Isabel Oakeshott (Twitter, 3:29 p.m., 10 August 10 2018), https://twitter.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1027924888848396288?s=20 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 105 ‘the privileging of freedom of speech over freedom to life’: Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race Relations (Brief Letters, Guardian, 25 March 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/25/freedom-of-speech-or-freedom-to-life [accessed on 25 July 2019] 106 ‘has never accepted an absolutist interpretation of freedom of speech’: Christopher Wolfe, ‘The Limits of Free Speech (Book Review)’ (Review of Politics, Notre Dame, Ind.

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zd=1&zi=6ioipdib [accessed on 25 July 2019] 171 ‘Americans’ sketchy understanding’: Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Atlantic Books, 2017), 13 172 ‘in order to save the 40 million’: Pankaj Mishra, ‘How colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war’ (Guardian, 10 November 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/10/how-colonial-violence-came-home-the-ugly-truth-of-the-first-world-war [accessed on 25 July 2019] 174 ‘They were not there on holiday’: Simon Akam, ‘Left Behind’ (The New Republic, 21 May 2011), https://newrepublic.com/article/88797/british-empire-queen-elizabeth-india-ireland-africa-imperial [accessed on 25 July 2019] 176 ‘But the research also found’: Sally Weale, ‘Michael Gove’s claims about history teaching are false, says research’ (Guardian, 13 September 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/13/michael-goves-claims-about-history-teaching-are-false-says-research [accessed on 25 July 2019] 177 ‘an inherent bias in the curriculum that runs the other way’: The Secret Teacher, ‘Secret Teacher: the emphasis on British history is depriving students of balance’ (Guardian, 26 May 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/may/26/secret-teacher-history-bias-school-fear-student-future [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘Anyone who suggests that the United Kingdom cannot be trusted’: Department for Exiting the European Union and The Rt Hon David Davis MP, ‘David Davis’ speech on the future security partnership’ (GOV.UK, 6 June 2018), https://www.gov.uk/government/news/david-davis-speech-on-the-future-security-partnership [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘The first Eurosceptic’: Jonathan Isaby, ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg identifies the three historical heroes from his constituency who will be his political inspiration’ (Conservative Home, 8 June 2010), https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2010/06/jacob-reesmogg-identifies-the-three-historical-heroes-from-his-constituency-who-will-be-his-politica.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘we survived our break from Europe’: Giles Fraser, ‘The English Reformation was the first Brexit – we survived our break from Europe then, and we’ll do so again’ (Telegraph, 18 August 2018), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/14/english-reformation-first-brexit-survived-break-europe-do/ 179 ‘showed the world what a free people could achieve’: Michael Gove, ‘EU referendum: Michael Gove explains why Britain should leave the EU’ (Telegraph, 20 February 2016), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12166345/European-referendum-Michael-Gove-explains-why-Britain-should-leave-the-EU.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘it will be like Dunkirk again’: Andrew MacAskill, Anjuli Davies, ‘“Insecurity is fantastic,” says billionaire funder of Brexit campaign’ (Reuters, 11 May 2016), https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-donations-hargreaves/insecurity-is-fantastic-says-billionaire-funder-of-brexit-campaign-idUKKCN0Y22ID [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘Thirty-five years ago this week’: Owen Bennett, ‘“We Will Go To War With Spain Over Gibraltar”’ Warns Ex-Tory Leader Lord Howard (Huffington Post, 2 April 2017), https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gibraltar-war-falklands-lord-howard_uk_58e0ed0ee4b0c777f788130f [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘unbelievable that within a week’: George Parker, Jim Brunsden, Ian Mount, ‘Gibraltar tensions bubble over into British war talk’ (Financial Times, 2 April 2017), https://www.ft.com/content/391f0114-17a1-11e7-a53d-df09f373be87 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘a colossal military disaster’: ‘Great Speeches of the 19th Century: Winston Churchill, “We shall fight on the beaches” (Guardian, 20 April 2007), https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/20/greatspeeches1 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘miracle of deliverance’: ibid. 182 ‘you must take the decision which is fraught with risk’: Harry Yorke, ‘Boris Johnson likens Brexit dilemma to Churchill’s defiance of Hitler’ (Telegraph, 6 December 2018), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/06/boris-johnson-likens-brexit-dilemma-churchills-defiance-hitler/ [accessed on 25 July 2019] 183 ‘make me an offer’: Lucy Pasha-Robinson, ‘Angela Merkel “ridicules Theresa May’s Brexit demands during secret press briefing”’ (Independent, 29 January 2018), https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-theresa-may-brexit-demands-press-briefing-davos-eu-talks-a8183436.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 183 ‘France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States’: ‘An affair to remember’ (Economist, 27 July 2006), https://www.economist.com/node/7218678 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 184 ‘betrayed our relationship’: Boris Johnson, ‘The Aussies are just like us, so let’s stop kicking them out’ (Telegraph, 25 August 2013), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10265619/The-Aussies-are-just-like-us-so-lets-stop-kicking-them-out.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 185 ‘While the empire’: David Olusoga, ‘Empire 2.0 is dangerous nostalgia for something that never existed’ (Guardian, 19 March 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/empire-20-is-dangerous-nostalgia-for-something-that-never-existed [accessed on 25 July 2019] 185 ‘The twentieth century saw the UK eclipsed’: Simon Akam, ‘Left Behind’ (The New Republic, 21 May 2011), https://newrepublic.com/article/88797/british-empire-queen-elizabeth-india-ireland-africa-imperial [accessed on 25 July 2019] 187 ‘an exercise in British wish-fulfilment’: Nikita Lalwani, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: an exercise in British wish-fulfilment’ (Guardian, 27 February 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/27/best-exotic-marigold-hotel-compliance [accessed on 25 July 2019] 188 ‘a wave of colonial nostalgia’: Stuart Jeffries, ‘The best exotic nostalgia boom: why colonial style is back’ (Guardian, 19 March 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/19/the-best-exotic-nostalgia-boom-why-colonial-style-is-back [accessed on 25 July 2019] 189 ‘reduce the country to the status of “colony”’: Guy Faulconbridge, ‘Boris Johnson says Brexit deal will make Britain an EU colony’ (Reuters, 13 November 2018), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-johnson/boris-johnson-says-brexit-deal-will-make-britain-an-eu-colony-idUSKCN1NI16D [accessed on 25 July 2019] 189 ‘not a vassal state but a slave state’: Nick Clegg, ‘On Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg is right: Britain risks vassal status’ (Financial Times, 27 January 2018), https://www.ft.com/content/be44ff5a-028e-11e8-9e12-af73e8db3c71 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 191 ‘the rags to riches dream of a millionaire’s blank check’: Thomas A.

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zd=1&zi=6ioipdib [accessed on 25 July 2019] 171 ‘Americans’ sketchy understanding’: Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Atlantic Books, 2017), 13 172 ‘in order to save the 40 million’: Pankaj Mishra, ‘How colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war’ (Guardian, 10 November 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/10/how-colonial-violence-came-home-the-ugly-truth-of-the-first-world-war [accessed on 25 July 2019] 174 ‘They were not there on holiday’: Simon Akam, ‘Left Behind’ (The New Republic, 21 May 2011), https://newrepublic.com/article/88797/british-empire-queen-elizabeth-india-ireland-africa-imperial [accessed on 25 July 2019] 176 ‘But the research also found’: Sally Weale, ‘Michael Gove’s claims about history teaching are false, says research’ (Guardian, 13 September 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/13/michael-goves-claims-about-history-teaching-are-false-says-research [accessed on 25 July 2019] 177 ‘an inherent bias in the curriculum that runs the other way’: The Secret Teacher, ‘Secret Teacher: the emphasis on British history is depriving students of balance’ (Guardian, 26 May 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/may/26/secret-teacher-history-bias-school-fear-student-future [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘Anyone who suggests that the United Kingdom cannot be trusted’: Department for Exiting the European Union and The Rt Hon David Davis MP, ‘David Davis’ speech on the future security partnership’ (GOV.UK, 6 June 2018), https://www.gov.uk/government/news/david-davis-speech-on-the-future-security-partnership [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘The first Eurosceptic’: Jonathan Isaby, ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg identifies the three historical heroes from his constituency who will be his political inspiration’ (Conservative Home, 8 June 2010), https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2010/06/jacob-reesmogg-identifies-the-three-historical-heroes-from-his-constituency-who-will-be-his-politica.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘we survived our break from Europe’: Giles Fraser, ‘The English Reformation was the first Brexit – we survived our break from Europe then, and we’ll do so again’ (Telegraph, 18 August 2018), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/14/english-reformation-first-brexit-survived-break-europe-do/ 179 ‘showed the world what a free people could achieve’: Michael Gove, ‘EU referendum: Michael Gove explains why Britain should leave the EU’ (Telegraph, 20 February 2016), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12166345/European-referendum-Michael-Gove-explains-why-Britain-should-leave-the-EU.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘it will be like Dunkirk again’: Andrew MacAskill, Anjuli Davies, ‘“Insecurity is fantastic,” says billionaire funder of Brexit campaign’ (Reuters, 11 May 2016), https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-donations-hargreaves/insecurity-is-fantastic-says-billionaire-funder-of-brexit-campaign-idUKKCN0Y22ID [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘Thirty-five years ago this week’: Owen Bennett, ‘“We Will Go To War With Spain Over Gibraltar”’ Warns Ex-Tory Leader Lord Howard (Huffington Post, 2 April 2017), https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gibraltar-war-falklands-lord-howard_uk_58e0ed0ee4b0c777f788130f [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘unbelievable that within a week’: George Parker, Jim Brunsden, Ian Mount, ‘Gibraltar tensions bubble over into British war talk’ (Financial Times, 2 April 2017), https://www.ft.com/content/391f0114-17a1-11e7-a53d-df09f373be87 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘a colossal military disaster’: ‘Great Speeches of the 19th Century: Winston Churchill, “We shall fight on the beaches” (Guardian, 20 April 2007), https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/20/greatspeeches1 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘miracle of deliverance’: ibid. 182 ‘you must take the decision which is fraught with risk’: Harry Yorke, ‘Boris Johnson likens Brexit dilemma to Churchill’s defiance of Hitler’ (Telegraph, 6 December 2018), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/06/boris-johnson-likens-brexit-dilemma-churchills-defiance-hitler/ [accessed on 25 July 2019] 183 ‘make me an offer’: Lucy Pasha-Robinson, ‘Angela Merkel “ridicules Theresa May’s Brexit demands during secret press briefing”’ (Independent, 29 January 2018), https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-theresa-may-brexit-demands-press-briefing-davos-eu-talks-a8183436.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 183 ‘France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States’: ‘An affair to remember’ (Economist, 27 July 2006), https://www.economist.com/node/7218678 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 184 ‘betrayed our relationship’: Boris Johnson, ‘The Aussies are just like us, so let’s stop kicking them out’ (Telegraph, 25 August 2013), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10265619/The-Aussies-are-just-like-us-so-lets-stop-kicking-them-out.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 185 ‘While the empire’: David Olusoga, ‘Empire 2.0 is dangerous nostalgia for something that never existed’ (Guardian, 19 March 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/empire-20-is-dangerous-nostalgia-for-something-that-never-existed [accessed on 25 July 2019] 185 ‘The twentieth century saw the UK eclipsed’: Simon Akam, ‘Left Behind’ (The New Republic, 21 May 2011), https://newrepublic.com/article/88797/british-empire-queen-elizabeth-india-ireland-africa-imperial [accessed on 25 July 2019] 187 ‘an exercise in British wish-fulfilment’: Nikita Lalwani, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: an exercise in British wish-fulfilment’ (Guardian, 27 February 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/27/best-exotic-marigold-hotel-compliance [accessed on 25 July 2019] 188 ‘a wave of colonial nostalgia’: Stuart Jeffries, ‘The best exotic nostalgia boom: why colonial style is back’ (Guardian, 19 March 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/19/the-best-exotic-nostalgia-boom-why-colonial-style-is-back [accessed on 25 July 2019] 189 ‘reduce the country to the status of “colony”’: Guy Faulconbridge, ‘Boris Johnson says Brexit deal will make Britain an EU colony’ (Reuters, 13 November 2018), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-johnson/boris-johnson-says-brexit-deal-will-make-britain-an-eu-colony-idUSKCN1NI16D [accessed on 25 July 2019] 189 ‘not a vassal state but a slave state’: Nick Clegg, ‘On Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg is right: Britain risks vassal status’ (Financial Times, 27 January 2018), https://www.ft.com/content/be44ff5a-028e-11e8-9e12-af73e8db3c71 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 191 ‘the rags to riches dream of a millionaire’s blank check’: Thomas A.

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis by Dr Dominic Pimenta

3D printing, Boris Johnson, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, fake news, global pandemic, iterative process, lockdown, post-truth, Rubik’s Cube, school choice, Skype, social distancing, stem cell

The pieces of the herd immunity narrative are strewn through the last six months and paint an ugly picture. On 3 February, Boris Johnson gave a speech at Greenwich, claiming one country should “make the case for the right of freedom of exchange” and prevent unnecessary measures that were “beyond medically rational”. He described “some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion . . . I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.”2 Later, in conversations with the Italian Prime Minister, Boris Johnson was on record as stating “herd immunity” as his goal.3 The position of his chief special advisor, Dominic Cummings, was reportedly summarized at a private function in identical terms: “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if some old-age pensioners die, so be it” – although the fact that he said this was subsequently denied.

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I could understand the confusion and division, but what was the government doing? The guidelines hadn’t changed, community transmission was established, and yet there were no measures to stop the spread, even ones that required no energy or input from the public. The next morning, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was on “This Morning”, discussing coronavirus. The clip was edited, but one of the strategies he mentioned was to “take it on the chin” and let the virus pass through the population all in one go. In more formal terms, Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser, had discussed the rationale behind making early interventions in a similar way, introducing the concept of producing “herd immunity”.

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Some reports indicate that doctors are forced to choose who to save, with those over 65 not even being assessed by intensive care departments. Every diagnosis is the same: bilateral pneumonia, COVID-19. Given these accounts, I can’t understand the inaction on our end. I watched Professor Chris Whitty’s testimony at the Health and Social Care Select Committee on 6th March again, to which Boris Johnson later responded that it was important not to “fire your shots too early” in escalating measures to tackle the illness. I get the logic of “going too early” when it comes to lockdown measures and interventions in terms of the potential business and economic impact, but it feels as though we’re going to have to decide what’s more important: livelihoods or lives.

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency by Vicky Spratt

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, garden city movement, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, housing crisis, Housing First, illegal immigration, income inequality, Induced demand, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land value tax, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, negative equity, Overton Window, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, quantitative easing, rent control, Right to Buy, Rishi Sunak, Rutger Bregman, side hustle, social distancing, stop buying avocado toast, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

Available at england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1039530/FINAL_SAFE_AND_DECENT_HOMES_REPORT-_USE_FOR_LAUNCH.pdf ‘burning injustices’ … ‘the government I lead …’: Theresa May, ‘Statement from the new Prime Minister Theresa May’, transcript of speech delivered on 13 July 2016. Available at www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-from-the-new-prime-minister-theresa-may Boris Johnson’s increase in 2011: Jenny Jones, ‘Who can afford Boris Johnson’s new affordable housing?’, Guardian, 26 July 2011, www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2011/jul/26/boris-johnson-jenny-jones-housing ‘result in unnecessary … rents for tenants’: ‘Housing and Planning Bill’, House of Commons Debate, vol. 604, col. 706 (12 January 2016). Available at hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-01-12/debates/16011271000002/HousingAndPlanningBill on the market for £3.5 million: Mike Laycock, ‘Historic home on market for £3.5 million’, York Press, 16 July 2008, www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/3209854.historic-home-on-market-for-35-million/ it was adopted as government policy: Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats, ‘Lib Dem campaigners win campaign to abolish rental fees’, 27 November 2016, www.oxonlibdems.uk/2016_renterreforms; see also commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8756/ Eighty-six per cent of Britons would buy their own home: Glen Bramley, ‘Housing: Homes, Planning and Changing Policies’, in British Social Attitudes 28, NatCen Social Research (2012), p. 123, www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/38952/bsa28_8housing.pdf 63 per cent of households in Britain: Race Disparity Unit, ‘Home ownership’, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (2020).

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Now, house prices are bloated, the private rented sector is engorged and under-regulated, and too many people – including children living out their formative years – are stuck in limbo or stranded in temporary accommodation because we don’t have enough social housing. In September 2021, Boris Johnson moved Michael Gove over to the housing brief. Just as Theresa May had renamed the government department responsible for housing – changing its name from the Department for Communities and Local Government to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Johnson renamed it again. The Ministry of Housing became the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). ‘Levelling up’ was a nebulous concept which Boris Johnson had put front and centre of his administration, and one of the starkest examples of inequality in Britain is the urgent crisis in housing.

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While some British people saw their dream – independence from Eurocracy – realised, others felt that just over half of the country had voted for something they did not want but would have to live with. The Labour Party, beleaguered and led by Jeremy Corbyn (and subsequently Keir Starmer), struggled. The Conservatives, led by David Cameron, then Theresa May, then Boris Johnson, fought among themselves and yet continued not only to win elections, but win big. In the early hours of 13 December 2019, Johnson declared victory in an election which delivered the Conservatives their biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 win and the largest overall majority since Tony Blair’s landslide in 2001.

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World by Alan Rusbridger

airport security, basic income, Bellingcat, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, crisis actor, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Google Earth, green new deal, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Narrative Science, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, post-truth, profit motive, public intellectual, publication bias, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech baron, the scientific method, TikTok, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism

<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/08/the-guardian-view-on-climate-change-a-global-emergency> The editors. ‘From the Editors; The Times and Iraq’. The New York Times, 26 May 2004. <https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html> Elgot, Jessica. ‘Secret Boris Johnson column favoured UK remaining in EU’. The Guardian, 16 October 2016. <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/16/secret-boris-johnson-column-favoured-uk-remaining-in-eu> Ellis, Justin. ‘Q&A: The Guardian’s Gabriel Dance on new tools for story and cultivating interactive journalism’. NiemanLab, 25 November 2013. <https://www.niemanlab.org/2013/11/qa-the-guardians-gabriel-dance-on-new-tools-for-story-and-cultivating-interactive-journalism/> Embury-Dennis, Tom.

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There was lamentable confusion about how to cover the nightly parade of presidential lies, sulks, boasts and vainglorious irrelevance that flagged itself as public information. There was uncertainty about how to communicate risk. Some news outlets – initially, at least – seemed unable to imagine the scale of what was happening: it was easier to report on what videos Boris Johnson was watching in his hospital bed than on the hundreds dying every day all around. The newsrooms that had jettisoned their health or science correspondents struggled. The idiots who suggested that 5G phone masts could be spreading the disease encouraged arson and trashed their own brand. So, it was a mixed picture.

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That front page might bewilder anyone under the age of, say, thirty-five, whose only experience of the Daily Mail is of a paper that grew ever more fervent in its clamour to convince its readers that Europe represented everything that threatened the country’s best and brightest future. But likewise, we could skip forward nearly twenty years and meet a young and ambitious Daily Telegraph reporter in Brussels. The young Boris Johnson found the business of routine reporting on the European Union a bit, well, routine. He made a name for himself with a style of writing that was provocative, highly subjective and . . . perhaps we could settle for the word ‘inventive’. Take prawn cocktail crisps. Johnson announced in January 1993 that Europe was about to ban them.

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Benjamin R. Barber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, classic study, clean water, congestion pricing, corporate governance, Crossrail, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, digital divide, digital Maoism, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, gentrification, George Gilder, ghettoisation, global pandemic, global village, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, informal economy, information retrieval, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Lewis Mumford, London Interbank Offered Rate, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, megacity, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, Tony Hsieh, trade route, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, unpaid internship, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, zero-sum game

Mayors are not cities, however, and if our title is to be something more than a provocation, who and what mayors are has a good deal to do with the role of the city as a foundation for global governance. Can mayors really rule the world? Who on earth are they? Profile 3. The Efficient Jester BORIS JOHNSON OF LONDON A serious journalist and a slightly less serious mayor (defeating incumbent socialist Ken Livingstone for the first time in 2008 and then again in 2011), BORIS JOHNSON makes a joke of everything. When athletes arriving for the 2012 Summer Olympics were lost on wayward buses in London—still a city of almost eight million—for too many hours, he quipped, “They saw more of our fantastic city than they would otherwise have done.”1 And he told Carl Swanson, a New York Magazine reporter, that in order to build the new airport London would need to become Europe’s gateway, he himself would have to “assume supreme power in England.”

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For more on the “Southern Mystique,” see Howard Zinn, The Southern Mystique, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002. 24. C. V. Wedgwood, ed., The Trial of Charles I, London: Folio Press: J. M. Dent, 1974, pp. 88–91. Profile 3. Boris Johnson of London 1. John F. Burns, “Athletes Arrive in London, and Run into a Dead End,” New York Times, July 14, 2012. 2. “105 Minutes with Boris Johnson,” interview with Carl Swanson, New York Magazine, June 17, 2012. 3. Ibid. Chapter 4. Mayors Rule! Epigraph: Lyndon Johnson quote from “Troubled Cities—and Their Mayors,” Newsweek, March 13, 1967. 1. Paul Maslin, “Cities: The Last Remaining Redoubt of Public Confidence,” Remarks by Paul Maslin, 2011, U.S.

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Mayor of the World MICHAEL BLOOMBERG OF NEW YORK CHAPTER 2. THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT Virtue and Vice in the Life of the City Profile 2. The Incorruptible as Artist LEOLUCA ORLANDO OF PALERMO CHAPTER 3. THE CITY AND DEMOCRACY From Independent Polis to Interdependent Cosmopolis Profile 3. The Efficient Jester BORIS JOHNSON OF LONDON CHAPTER 4. MAYORS RULE! Is This What Democracy Looks Like? Profile 4. Governing in Partnership WOLFGANG SCHUSTER OF STUTTGART CHAPTER 5. INTERDEPENDENT CITIES Local Nodes and Global Synapses Profile 5. The Founder as President and the President as Mayor LEE KUAN YEW AND TONY TAN OF THE CITY-STATE OF SINGAPORE CHAPTER 6.

The London Problem: What Britain Gets Wrong About Its Capital City by Jack Brown

Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Etonian, gentrification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, knowledge economy, lockdown, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, post-war consensus, quantitative easing, remote working, Richard Florida, sceptred isle, superstar cities, working-age population, zero-sum game

But while some of the causes of this antagonism are particular to our times, and some are indeed entirely novel, others are longstanding grievances that have now become acute. This chapter puts the issues of today in context by providing a short history of London’s relationship with the nation. In September 2014, as mayor of London, Boris Johnson said, ‘A pound invested in London can drive jobs and growth around the country … When London grows the rest of the country grows.’1 Chapter One has shown that there is truth in this claim. In June 2020, as prime minister, Boris Johnson observed that ‘too many parts of this country have felt left behind, neglected, unloved, as though someone had taken a strategic decision that their fate did not matter as much as the metropolis.’2 The historical reality of this claim is examined in this chapter.

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In June 2020, as prime minister, Boris Johnson observed that ‘too many parts of this country have felt left behind, neglected, unloved, as though someone had taken a strategic decision that their fate did not matter as much as the metropolis.’2 The historical reality of this claim is examined in this chapter. Chapter Three goes on to examine the wider public ‘feeling’ towards London. ‘Levelling up’ Boris Johnson is the first former mayor of London to become prime minister of the United Kingdom. His government was elected in 2019 on a commitment to ‘level up’ the UK, a carefully chosen phrase that suggests tackling regional inequalities by boosting the economy and improving opportunities outside of London and the south-east rather than attacking or ‘levelling down’ the capital. The 2019 general election was notable for its results across the newly named ‘red wall’, a former Labour stronghold of constituencies stretching from north Wales to the north-east of England.

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Crossrail was part-funded by an additional tax on London-based businesses, and over half of the planned ‘Crossrail 2’ would be funded by London-only sources.55 Nevertheless, the idea that London received ‘more than its fair share’ persisted. Away from transport, other new pots of funding were established to counter the idea that London ‘gets everything’. A ‘Stronger Towns’ fund, initiated under May but ultimately delivered by her successor, Boris Johnson, was established to provide funding to ‘left behind’ towns across the country. The allocation of such funding, however, has proved highly controversial: the criteria have been unclear and subject to accusations of politicisation.56 And the politics were increasingly volatile. In November 2017, mayor of London Sadiq Khan attacked ‘the most anti-London Budget in a generation’ for its affordable housing funding pledges; earlier that year, he had branded May ‘the most anti-London leader of a mainstream party since Margaret Thatcher.’57 Some of this was about more than just funding.

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order by Colin Kahl, Thomas Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, deglobalization, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, future of work, George Floyd, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, job automation, junk bonds, Kibera, lab leak, liberal world order, lockdown, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, mobile money, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, one-China policy, open borders, open economy, Paris climate accords, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey, zoonotic diseases

Mitnick, “Israel’s Cautionary Coronavirus Tale”; Steve Hendrix, “Why Israel Is Seeing a Coronavirus Spike After Initially Crushing the Outbreak,” Washington Post, July 7, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middlle_east/why-israel-is-seeing-a-coronavirus-spike-after-initially-crushing-the-outbreak/2020/07/07/dd141158-bfbc-11ea-8908–68a2b9eae9e0_story.html; “Netanyahu Admits Israel’s Economy Reopened ‘Too Soon,’” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 10, 2020, https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/netanyahu-admits-israels-economy-reopened-too-soon; Ariel Oseran, “Israel Considers a Second Lockdown as Coronavirus Cases Surge,” The World, July 17, 2020, https://www.pri.org/stories/2020–070–17/israel-considers-second-lockdown-coronavirus-cases-surge; Anshel Pfeffer, “Why Netanyahu Failed the Coronavirus Stress Test,” Haaretz, July 10, 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-netanyahu-failed-the-coronavirus-stress-test-1.8984398.   67.  Graeme Wilson and George Jones, “Boris Johnson Inspired by Jaws Mayor,” Telegraph, July 18, 2007, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1557765/Boris-Johnson-inspired-by-Jaws-mayor.html.   68.  Hayley Mortimer, “Coronavirus: Cheltenham Festival ‘May Have Accelerated’ Spread,” BBC, April 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-52485584; Dan Roan, “Liverpool v Atletico Madrid: Mayor Calls for Inquiry amid Coronavirus Concerns,” BBC, April 23, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/52399569; Anthony Costello, “The United Kingdom Is Flying Blind on Covid-19,” New Statesman, March 20, 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2020/03/uk-response-coronavirus-pandemic-distancing-medical-advice; Neel Patel, “The UK Is Scrambling to Correct Its Coronavirus Strategy,” MIT Technology Review, March 16, 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/16/905285/uk-dropping-coronavirus-herd-immunity-strategy-250000-dead/; Andrew Sparrow, “Boris Johnson Warns Britons to Avoid Non-Essential Contact as Covid-19 Death Toll Rises—As It Happened,” The Guardian, March 16, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/mar/16/boris-johnson-press-conference-coronavirus-live-firms-could-soon-be-allowed-to-run-reduced-services-because-of-coronavirus-shapps-suggests-politics-live; Amanda Sloat, “Reopening the World: Britain Bungled Its Lockdown and Garbled Its Reopening,” Brookings Institution, June 16, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-frsom-chaos/2020/06/16/reopening-the-world-britain-bungled-its-lockdown-and-garbled-its-reopening/.   69.  

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Hayley Mortimer, “Coronavirus: Cheltenham Festival ‘May Have Accelerated’ Spread,” BBC, April 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-52485584; Dan Roan, “Liverpool v Atletico Madrid: Mayor Calls for Inquiry amid Coronavirus Concerns,” BBC, April 23, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/52399569; Anthony Costello, “The United Kingdom Is Flying Blind on Covid-19,” New Statesman, March 20, 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2020/03/uk-response-coronavirus-pandemic-distancing-medical-advice; Neel Patel, “The UK Is Scrambling to Correct Its Coronavirus Strategy,” MIT Technology Review, March 16, 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/16/905285/uk-dropping-coronavirus-herd-immunity-strategy-250000-dead/; Andrew Sparrow, “Boris Johnson Warns Britons to Avoid Non-Essential Contact as Covid-19 Death Toll Rises—As It Happened,” The Guardian, March 16, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/mar/16/boris-johnson-press-conference-coronavirus-live-firms-could-soon-be-allowed-to-run-reduced-services-because-of-coronavirus-shapps-suggests-politics-live; Amanda Sloat, “Reopening the World: Britain Bungled Its Lockdown and Garbled Its Reopening,” Brookings Institution, June 16, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-frsom-chaos/2020/06/16/reopening-the-world-britain-bungled-its-lockdown-and-garbled-its-reopening/.   69.  

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“Coronavirus: Prime Minister Boris Johnson Tests Positive,” BBC, March 27, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52060791; “What’s Gone Wrong with Covid-19 Testing in Britain,” The Economist, April 4, 2020, https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/04/whats-gone-wrong-with-covid-19-testing-in-britain; Andrew MacAskill, “UK Defends Coronavirus Response After Reuters Investigation,” Reuters, April 9, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-modelling/uk-defends-coronavirus-response-after-reuters-investigation-idUSKCN21R33D.   70.  Colin Dwyer, “Boris Johnson: U.K. Is ‘Past the Peak’ of Its Coronavirus Outbreak,” NPR, April 30, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/30/848496099/boris-johnson-u-k-is-past-the-peak-of-its-coronavirus-outbreak.   71.  

How Cycling Can Save the World by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, car-free, correlation does not imply causation, Crossrail, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Enrique Peñalosa, fixed-gear, gentrification, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, meta-analysis, New Journalism, New Urbanism, post-work, publication bias, safety bicycle, Sidewalk Labs, Stop de Kindermoord, TED Talk, the built environment, traffic fines, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, transit-oriented development, urban planning

We are realizing that if you have people walk and bicycle more, you have a more lively, more livable, more attractive, more safe, more sustainable, and more healthy city. And what are you waiting for?”3 We Do Not Want to Lose Any More So what was London waiting for? In part, it was waiting for the then-mayor, Boris Johnson, to stop building bike lanes marked only by paint, and embark on a network of better-designed cycle routes. This he did, and fairly soon: work began on the city’s first major separated lanes in early 2014. The complex and fascinating political battle behind this process is told in chapter 6, but one element in particular illustrates the changing attitude of big business to mass cycling.

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But their interest in cycling as an economic force, or even just something they should be seen to support, is nonetheless fascinating. There are still those in big business who argue that a vibrant and competitive city is based around roads choked with cars, taxis, and vans. But they are increasingly starting to look like dinosaurs, clinging to a bygone era. Rewriting the Code of the Streets Boris Johnson was not the only mayor of a major global city to recently push through new cycling infrastructure amid noisy opposition, despite holding avowedly free-market opinions. Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, predated Johnson in becoming serious about cycling, and was something of an inspiration to his London counterpart.

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Parking, especially free, on-street parking, is one of those areas that many people seem somehow to take both entirely for granted and very, very personally. People in New York seem to “treat every parking space like it was their firstborn child,” says Janette Sadik-Khan, recalling the battles she endured over it. Her near-equivalent, Andrew Gilligan, Boris Johnson’s mayoral commissioner for cycling in London from 2013 to 2015, once confessed he never even tried to properly tackle the subject. “Parking is the third rail of politics,” he said, referring to the live power line that runs between the tracks of many subway systems. “If you touch it, you die.”14 If any thought is given to the economics of easy on-street parking, the assumption is often that its impact is generally neutral.

Reaching for Utopia: Making Sense of an Age of Upheaval by Jason Cowley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, coherent worldview, Corn Laws, corporate governance, crony capitalism, David Brooks, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, illegal immigration, Jeremy Corbyn, liberal world order, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, post-war consensus, public intellectual, Right to Buy, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, technological determinism, University of East Anglia

But because it happened for me on my thirtieth birthday, and the cabinet in my early forties, maybe you have a sense that your time may have been at an earlier stage. I definitely felt that in 2010.’ Eddie Morgan has worked for the BBC and ITV as an editor and producer. He was close to Cooper and Purnell in the late 1980s when he read philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford (where they overlapped with Boris Johnson) and he worked alongside the Golden Generation in the early 2000s when he was Labour assistant general secretary. ‘How foolish that now all looks,’ he said, reflecting on the Blair-Brown conflict – the so-called TBGBs. ‘Talk about the narcissism of small differences! They really were a golden generation, weren’t they?

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Cameron was one of those students at Oxford people knew of and spoke about, even if they didn’t actually know him. Journalists such as Toby Young and James Delingpole, who knew Cameron a little back then, write enviously even today of the effect of his youthful hauteur and insouciance. Unlike Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, Cameron stayed clear of student politics and of the Oxford Union. He liked to dress up in white tie and tails, played tennis and always said thank you at the end of a tutorial. He had such good manners and such charm, and together these have carried him a very long way, to the top of British politics as prime minister of the first coalition government since the Second World War.

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James Wood, now a literary critic and Harvard professor, remembers Cameron as being ‘confident, entitled, gracious, secure . . . exactly the kind of “natural Etonian” I was not’. He remarks on Cameron’s ‘charm and decency [at Eton] – almost a kind of sweetness, actually’, though he says Cameron showed little interest in politics. (Rory Stewart, the writer-traveller, Conservative MP and another Etonian, once told me that he thought Cameron and Boris Johnson were the ‘wrong kind of Etonians’, which leads one to assume that there must be a right kind, of whom Stewart is presumably one.) Eton: a word of just four letters but with a multiplicity of associations. Eton: a word synonymous with upper class and aristocratic ease and entitlement. Eton: a word that inspires as much anger as it does respect.

Brexit and Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities, and the Inside Story of the Irish Response by Tony Connelly

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, centre right, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, electricity market, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Thompson, knowledge economy, land bank, LNG terminal, low skilled workers, non-tariff barriers, open borders, personalized medicine, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, tech worker, éminence grise

Numerous EU delegations had gathered in the Novotel bar to watch the results trickling in on Sky News. There were grounds for optimism, not just from Lidington’s phone call. A YouGov poll released as polls closed at 10 p.m. predicted a Remain victory by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, told Sky News by phone that he thought the Remain side was going to ‘edge it’. Boris Johnson, MP, the former Mayor of London and a prominent Leave campaigner, appeared to have conceded. But that was before the thunderbolts from the north-east of England. At 1 a.m. Luxembourg time, the Newcastle result flashed up on Sky News. Newcastle had been expected to vote heavily in favour of Remain; but Remain prevailed only by a whisker.

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That also meant waiting for the official response from Downing Street. Some senior officials in Room 308 had wondered if David Cameron would tough it out. There had been an assumption that the Tory leadership question would not be resolved until the autumn, a belief supported by statements from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the most prominent Brexiteers. At around 8.15 a.m. Cameron emerged with his wife, Samantha, from Number 10. Room 308 suddenly went quiet. The emergency Cabinet meeting was just over, and Charlie Flanagan, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was slumped on one of the sofas, looking up at the screen.

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‘The freedom of movement line was agreed by Kenny, and repeated in his press conference afterwards. This was very significant. It wasn’t [Slovak Prime Minister Robert] Fico or [former Polish President Jarosław] Kaczyński saying it. It was Kenny. Kenny gave it more weight.’ The Brexit result triggered a spate of bloodletting within the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson had been expected to stand for the leadership, but pulled out at the last minute when he learned that his ally, Michael Gove, was about to launch his own bid. Stephen Crabb, the Work and Pensions Secretary, dropped out of the race due to lack of support and within days was embroiled in a ‘sexting’ scandal.

Legacy: Gangsters, Corruption and the London Olympics by Michael Gillard

Boris Johnson, business intelligence, centre right, Crossrail, forensic accounting, Jeremy Corbyn, offshore financial centre, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), upwardly mobile, working-age population, young professional

The MP was keen to know what dirt he had but Law was reticent about showing his hand. ‘[Lyn] asked for everything I’d got on the Parks police scandal,’ said the rebel councillor, but he refused to hand over the file. Instead, the dossier was shown to his new party and Law tried, without success, to get former London Tory mayoral candidate Steve Norris, and Boris Johnson, the future one, interested in what was going on in Labour Newham. It was quickly apparent that ‘there wasn’t a cigarette paper between the parties’ and no interest in raising the spectre of corruption after London had won the Olympics bid. In effect, Law had run up against a new united front across party lines to put on the best show possible.

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In November 2008, George raised the matter with the Labour government as a supporter of Tessa Jowell, his local MP, who was now the Olympics minister. His letter was also addressed to Sir Ian Blair, the police commissioner, and copied to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, home secretary Jacqui Smith and the newly-elected Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson. ‘The story I listened to would make any taxpayer very angry to know that police officers doing their jobs are put at such risk and then treated so poorly … The investigation must have cost millions … Please can you help to bring some pressure to bear to complete this investigation … David is very unwell and has become worse.’

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Despite the global financial crisis, which started to bite in 2008, the London Olympic development was the biggest demolition programme in Europe with more than two hundred buildings knocked down and others erected. Some, such as the media centre, were big enough to house five jumbo jets standing wing tip to wing tip. On the campaign trail to becoming the first Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson had talked up the Games as a never-again, not-to-be-missed business opportunity for UK plc. The Long Fella, whose own politics remain a mystery, was, as ever, ahead of the curve. In April 2008, he had formed a joint venture between his waste management plant and a leading demolition group of companies whose owner donated heavily to the Tories.

Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System by Colin Yeo;

barriers to entry, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, G4S, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Jeremy Corbyn, low skilled workers, lump of labour, open immigration, post-war consensus, self-driving car, Shamima Begum, Skype, Socratic dialogue

The change of tone was not accompanied by any official change in policy, although some of the measures most likely to affect unintended victims, such as automatic closure of bank accounts, were suspended (see Chapter 3). Although Theresa May was able to survive the Windrush scandal, she could not weather Brexit and formally resigned as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019 to make way for Boris Johnson. JOHNSON AND BEYOND In 2018 the government belatedly published a White Paper proposing a new immigration system for post-Brexit Britain. It proposed that the status quo established by Theresa May as Home Secretary would be maintained, except that free movement for EU citizens would be ended and they, along with all other migrants, would be subject to a slightly streamlined version of the existing immigration system.

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This was perhaps no surprise, as the White Paper was published with Theresa May still at the helm as Prime Minister, although admittedly very much in her latter days. There was no suggestion that the system of citizen-on-citizen immigration checks would be dismantled, the family immigration rules reformed or citizenship policy widened. May’s replacement by Johnson threw these plans into doubt. One of Boris Johnson’s defining characteristics, and perhaps his greatest strength, is what some might call his moral flexibility – though others might call this lack of principle. At the time of writing it is impossible to discern what immigration policy, if any, Johnson might pursue in office. So far, he seems to offer all things to all factions.

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The names were changed for the purposes of the report, which is available at: https://www.lag.org.uk/about-us/policy/campaigns/chasing-status 43 ‘Tighter immigration laws catching out long-term legal migrants – report’, The Guardian, 15 October 2014. 44 See Amelia Gentleman, The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment (London: Guardian Faber, 2019) for the full account. 45 ‘“Shameful”: widespread outrage over man denied NHS cancer care’, The Guardian, 12 March 2018. 46 See Gentleman, The Windrush Betrayal. 47 Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and Gisela Stuart, ‘Restoring public trust in immigration policy – a points-based non-discriminatory immigration system’, Vote Leave, 1 June 2016. 48 ‘Unsettled Status? Which EU Citizens are at Risk of Failing to Secure their Rights after Brexit?’, Migration Observatory, 12 April 2018. 49 ‘Asylum seeker denied cancer treatment by Home Office dies’, The Guardian, 19 September 2019. 50 See for example ‘Thousands of asylum seekers and migrants wrongly denied NHS healthcare’, The Independent, 16 April 2017, and ‘Pregnant women without legal status “too afraid to seek NHS care”’, The Guardian, 20 March 2017. 51 ‘Briefing: what is the hostile environment, where does it comes from, who does it affect?’

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, colonial rule, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Donald Trump, double helix, Easter island, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, Google Earth, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Suez crisis 1956, the map is not the territory, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois

‘People’s reputations are being trashed for holding opinions that a large majority of people held at the time – essentially for being insufficiently woke.’30 Boris Johnson expressed similar views: ‘The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong.’31 The Man of His Time argument contends that the subject of a statue is complicated, because he did good things as well as bad things. These must be balanced against each other, and forgiven accordingly. Boris Johnson again, talking about the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square: ‘It is absurd and shameful that this national monument should today be at risk of attack by violent protesters.

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The following tweet was illustrated with the named statues of Mary Seacole and Floella Benjamin. 26Tim Stanley, ‘Tearing down Confederate statues won’t wipe out past evils’, Daily Mail, 18 August 2017. 27@Boris Johnson (verified account), Twitter, 12 June 2020, 11:25 a.m. 28Chris Wallace speaking on Fox news, 11 June 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/chris-wallace/chris-wallace-compares-removal-confederate-statues-mao-zedongs-cultural-revolution. 29Tammy Bruce speaking on Fox News, 23 June 2020, https://video.foxnews.com/v/6166637768001sp=show-clips. 30Andrew Roberts, ‘Stop this trashing of monuments – and of our past’, Mail on Sunday, 13 June 2020. 31@Boris Johnson (verified account), Twitter, 12 June 2020, 11:25 a.m.. 32Ibid. 33Sarah Vine, ‘I fear for Britain’s future if we erase the past (good and bad)’, Daily Mail, 9 June 2020. 34Robert Jenrick, ‘We will save our history from woke militants who want to censor our past’, Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2021. 35Donald Trump, speaking on Fox News, 23 June 2020, video at https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-blasts-weak-states-for-allowing-targeting-of-statues-to-happen. 1: A Revolutionary Beginning: King George III 1Remarks by President Trump at the 2020 Salute to America, 5 July 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-2020-salute-america/. 2Ruth Kenny, ‘Joseph Wilton’s equestrian statue of George III, Bowling Green, New York’, in Tabitha Barber and Stacy Boldrick, eds, Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm (London: Tate Publishing, 2013), p. 106; Arthur S.

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‘He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.’3 Trump responded on Twitter by denying that he had suggested it, then, in the same sentence, suggesting it again: ‘This is Fake News by the failing @nytimes & bad ratings @CNN. Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!’4 Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, also took to Twitter: ‘those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come.’ The Conservative government announced that it would amend the Criminal Damage Act so anyone damaging a war memorial in Britain could also be looking at ten years in prison.5 Museums and civic authorities were quick to react too, though often in a different way.

The Making of a World City: London 1991 to 2021 by Greg Clark

Basel III, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, congestion charging, corporate governance, cross-subsidies, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, East Village, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, financial intermediation, gentrification, global value chain, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, housing crisis, industrial cluster, intangible asset, job polarisation, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open immigration, Pearl River Delta, place-making, rent control, Robert Gordon, Silicon Valley, smart cities, sovereign wealth fund, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, working poor

Available at www.budget.gov.hk/2012/eng/budget31.html. Accessed 2013 Mar 4. Hong Kong Government (2013). The 2013-14 Budget. Available at www.budget .gov.hk/2013/eng/highlights.html. Accessed 2014 Feb 16. Howlett S (2013). Boris Johnson’s stamp duty plan offers solution to affordable housing supply. The Guardian. Feb 15. Available at www.guardian.co.uk/housingnetwork/2013/feb/15/boris-johnson-stamp-duty. Accessed 2013 Feb 21. Hudson N (2014). Housing tenure in England and Wales. Savills. Jan 30. Available at www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/141564/172300-0. Accessed 2014 Feb 16. Hutton W (1991). Foreword.

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Indeed, the Mayoral figurehead has quickly become an indispensable feature of London life. Both Mayors (Livingstone and Johnson) up until now have keenly sought the unique media platform the position offers to communicate their vision for London. Ken Livingstone made much of his authenticity as a committed Londoner, while Boris Johnson’s charisma has drawn media attention to his activities to manage a more competitive London (Travers, 2013a). Shortly before his passing, Professor Sir Peter Hall reflected on the role of the Mayor: “The London Mayor has proved to be brilliantly effective in three ways; promoting London internationally, co-ordinating activities within London, and making the case for London to central government.

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Strategic plans for London continue to hinge on the capacity to persuade central government to guarantee essential items of investment. As such, London must rely more on central government “avoiding catastrophically bad decisions” than on the city’s own capacity to effect change (The Economist, 2013b). Under Mayor Boris Johnson, the London Plan has been successively modified. London’s global city credentials have been spatialised into commitments to excellent liveability, local autonomy and housing development (Figure 5.3). Questions still persist as to whether the Plan makes sufficient allowance for the city’s varied housing needs, and what practical measures can rebalance growth away from the poles of the CBD, West End and The City, and Canary Wharf (the Central Activities Zone).

Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016 by Stewart Lee

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Boris Johnson, Bullingdon Club, call centre, centre right, David Attenborough, Etonian, gentrification, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Livingstone, I presume, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, pre–internet, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Russell Brand, Saturday Night Live, sensible shoes, Socratic dialogue, Stephen Fry, trickle-down economics, wage slave, young professional

The scenario above is sheer satirical fantasy, of course, and it is lazy of the Left to make political capital out of the fact that the chancellor made welfare savings while eating a burger, even if it was a more expensive burger than any the average welfare claimant could ever afford. But it is hardly a state secret that Byron burgers are extremely popular with the right-wing politicos who dwell in the leafy paradise of west London. Byron is run by Tom Byng, a member of the same Old Etonian cabal as David Cameron himself and Boris Johnson. And the mass of juicy meat that top Tories ate in Byng’s previous restaurant, Zucca, saw it described as the de facto works canteen of the Cameron set. Even Nicholas Clegg extols Byron’s succulent flattened beef pads. The coalition has bonded over Byron burgers, and all its key players are proud to stand before their fellows and declare, “Ich bin ein Byronburger.”

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I am filing this column, in English, on the morning of Thursday 2 January, but by the time you read it, on Sunday the 5th, it may already be appearing only in Romanian, in an attempt to court some of the 29 million potential new Observer readers the soft right predict will arrive this week. From a business point of view, should I be pro-Romanian or anti-Romanian? While I won’t be down at Luton airport handing out Costa coffees any time soon, I do nonetheless wonder which market should I work. At the end of November Boris Johnson, Britain’s first self-satirising politician, became an early advocate of the anti-Romanian business model, observing sadly: “We can do nothing to stop the entire population of Transylvania – charming though most of them may be – from trying to pitch camp at Marble Arch.” Johnson’s trademark tuck-shop wit makes him a formidable political orator.

…

Corden appears in the paper in knitted tie, his face painted with a cross of St George, looking like the Man at C&A version of the Christian soldier who goes crazy and dynamites the Cajun’s shack in Southern Comfort. The image illustrates his column. There is no need to read his column. A Sgt Pepper-style Sun collage of 117 definitive English people included James Corden, Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson, Michael McIntyre, David Cameron, Jeremy Clarkson and Nigel Farage, but no Mark E. Smith, William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ted Chippington or Pauline Black from The Selecter, which my superior version would have boasted. At which point during the preparation of the artwork was Gary Barlow crossed out?

The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Metropolitan Elite by Michael Lind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, anti-communist, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, cotton gin, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, export processing zone, fake news, future of work, gentrification, global supply chain, guest worker program, Haight Ashbury, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal world order, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Michael Milken, moral panic, Nate Silver, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, trade liberalization, union organizing, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Wolfgang Streeck, working poor

The technocratic neoliberal revolution from above, carried out in one Western nation after another by members of the ever more aggressive and powerful managerial elite, has provoked a populist backlash from below by the defensive and disempowered native working class, many of whom are nonwhite (a substantial minority of black and ethnic British voters supported Brexit, and in the US an estimated 29 percent of Latinos voted in 2016 for Trump).4 Large numbers of alienated working-class voters, realizing that the political systems of their nations are rigged and that mainstream parties will continue to ignore their interests and values, have found sometimes unlikely champions in demagogic populists like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, and Matteo Salvini. For all their differences, these populist demagogues have launched similar counterattacks on dominant neoliberal establishments in all three realms of social power. In the realm of the economy, populists favor national restrictions on trade and immigration to shield workers from competing with imports and immigrants.

…

It is more plausible to assume that they did so out of concerns about national and popular sovereignty than to believe that before 2019 one in seven Labour voters was a cryptofascist white supremacist.13 The actual antecedents of contemporary populist politicians like Trump are to be found not in interwar Central European totalitarian states but in state and local politics, particularly urban politics. In Europe, pro-Brexit Boris Johnson was the mayor of London before becoming prime minister, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini was on the city council of Milan from 1993 to 2012. In the United States, the shift from post-1945 democratic pluralism to technocratic neoliberalism was fostered from the 1960s onward by an alliance of the white overclass with African Americans and other racial minority groups.

…

In addition to making the usual comparison of Trump to Hitler, Browning displayed his supercilious erudition by comparing Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to Hitler’s predecessor and enabler German president Paul von Hindenburg.18 But even Browning’s clever comparison of McConnell to von Hindenburg draws from the stock of trite Nazi equivalence arguments. Surely other enterprising academics could draw parallels between contemporary politicians they despise and fascists less well-known than Hitler and Mussolini. Why not ransack interwar European history to declare that Boris Johnson is the new Miklós Horthy (Hungary) or that Matteo Salvini is the new Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (Portugal)? Granted, asserting that Donald Trump is the new Engelbert Dollfuss (Austria) does not make him seem very frightening. The most frequently cited evidence that Trump is a crypto-Nazi would-be dictator relied on his statements following violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017.

The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working-Class Kids Still Get Working-Class Jobs (Provocations Series) by James Bloodworth

Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, cognitive dissonance, Downton Abbey, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, income inequality, light touch regulation, meritocracy, precariat, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, We are the 99%, zero-sum game

Young’s oracular warning of half a century ago has been recast as a blueprint. 2 ‘Down with Meritocracy’, Michael Young, The Guardian, 29 June 2001. 3 Equality, R. H. Tawney, Unwin Books, 3rd edition (1975). 4 The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy, edited by Geoff Dench, Wiley-Blackwell, 1st edition (2006). 5 ‘David Cameron brushes Boris Johnson aside over IQ comments’, Tomas Jivanda, The Independent, 2 December 2013. 6 Nick Clegg, speech to the Sutton Trust, 22 May 2012. 7 ‘Ed Miliband attacks social inequality’, Martha Linden and James Tapsfield, The Independent, 21 May 2012. 8 ‘Wanted by Labour, working-class MPs’, Michael Savage, The Times, 16 July 2012. 9 Hansard, HC Deb, 13 July 1807, vol. 30, cc. 1007–48. 10 Hansard, HC Deb, 17 July 1873, vol. 217, cc. 502–90. 11 Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 1914–1939, Michael Freeden, Oxford University Press, 1st edition (1986).

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The elite are where they are, so it is argued, because they possess both the ability and the drive to succeed. If a disproportionate number of the rich are the products of an elite upbringing, well, that is because talent is distributed throughout society unevenly and is often hereditary. The former Mayor of London Boris Johnson articulated something along these lines when in 2013 he told the Centre for Policy Studies that inequality was the product of human beings who are ‘far from equal in raw ability’96 (though he also said that more should be done to help talented people from working-class backgrounds ‘rise to the top’).

…

The rich man is still in his castle and the poor man remains, as ever, loitering forlornly at his gate. But now the meritocracy has made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate. 95 ‘Some 95% of 2009–2012 Income Gains Went to Wealthiest 1%’, Brenda Cronin, Wall Street Journal, 10 September 2013. 96 ‘Boris Johnson: some people are too stupid to get on in life’, Peter Dominiczak and James Kirkup, Daily Telegraph, 27 November 2013. 97 Intelligence: All That Matters, Stuart Richie, Hodder & Stoughton, 1st edition (2015). 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 ‘After the Bell Curve’, David L. Kirp, New York Times Magazine, 23 July 2006. 101 Ibid.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

"there is no alternative" (TINA), 15-minute city, AlphaGo, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, Day of the Dead, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, imperial preference, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Monroe Doctrine, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, oil shock, open borders, out of africa, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, social distancing, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, UNCLOS, universal basic income, urban planning, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, considered the British tradition of effective, clean bureaucracy to be one of the key reasons for his city-state’s success, despite other onerous aspects of colonial rule. And yet, Britain has adopted the same anti-government ideology as the United States since the 1980s. It, too, has starved its domestic agencies in the name of efficiency and, in Boris Johnson, is run by a populist leader who scorns experts and views beureaucrats with great skepticism. His government, presiding over a state hollowed out by austerity, fared unusually poorly in its initial battle against Covid-19, far worse than Northern Europe did. By contrast, Greece, a young and still-developing democracy, with a legendarily dysfunctional bureaucracy, handled the pandemic exceptionally well.

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Steve Bannon argues that the seeds of Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party were sowed by that crash. In the years since, the Right has veered away from its devotion to markets, instead espousing protectionism, subsidies, immigration controls, and cultural nationalism—ideas championed by Trump in the United States, Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, and other populists around the world. On the left, meanwhile, two trendsetters have been Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, both self-described “socialists.” They have been joined by energetic newcomers on the political scene such as New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who seems just as comfortable with the label.

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He fired one health minister and caused his replacement to resign. Despite government regulations, he refused to wear a mask, leading a Brazilian judge to order him to wear one. Bolsonaro ended up a victim of his own careless attitude: he announced in July 2020 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Boris Johnson conspicuously did not socially distance in the early stages of the outbreak, and ended up in the ICU with Covid-19. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador encouraged people to go out, attend rallies, shake hands, and hug—all in direct contradiction of his own public health officials.

Inequality and the 1% by Danny Dorling

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, buy and hold, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, David Attenborough, David Graeber, delayed gratification, Dominic Cummings, double helix, Downton Abbey, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, family office, financial deregulation, full employment, gentrification, Gini coefficient, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, land value tax, Leo Hollis, Londongrad, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, lump of labour, mega-rich, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, precariat, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Robert Shiller, Russell Brand, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, unpaid internship, very high income, We are the 99%, wealth creators, working poor

Overvaluing yourself implies undervaluing others. Note: The data points for Australia and Italy are very close and overlap on the graph. Source: Loughan, Kuppens et al., 2011 Figure 2.4 Individual average self-enhancement verses economic inequality in fifteen nations In a major speech in November 2013, London mayor Boris Johnson told his audience: ‘Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130.’57 A numerate audience would have known that exactly 50 per cent of the population have an IQ above or below 100, and the ratios at all other IQ values can be found in a table.

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In 2007, at the age of 71, having finally managed to conquer her alcoholism, she was living on a pension of £87 a week, had an overdraft, and was searching for work.8 Even more extreme stories are now routinely told in the US, where it sometimes seems as if people will do anything for the chance of a fortune and routinely have their lives ruined through the ill effects of gaining riches.9 For millennia, we have known that greed harms and having too much can be damaging; but we seem able to forget faster than we can remember. In November 2013 Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London, made a speech in which he explained why he believed that greed was good: Like it or not, the free market economy is the only show in town … No one can ignore the harshness of that competition, or the inequalities that it inevitably accentuates [but] the top 1 per cent contributes almost 30 per cent of income tax; and indeed the top 0.1 per cent – just 29,000 people – contributes fully 14 per cent of all taxation.10 The implication is that those who grab the most for themselves also somehow give the most back, even if unwillingly, through taxation.

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Income tax is only 26 per cent of total government revenue – national insurance contributions raise 18 per cent, and VAT raises 17 per cent.11 The rich pay such a large proportion of income tax because their incomes are now so extraordinarily large, because they have worked so hard to raise their take and swallow up so much of what is available. Owing to VAT and other regressive levies, the 20 per cent least well-off of all households pay 36.6 per cent of their income in tax, while the wealthiest 20 per cent pay 35.5 per cent.12 Boris Johnson’s figure of 30 per cent of all income tax revenue equates to under 8 per cent of all government revenues, so there is no way that the top 0.1 per cent can be contributing 14 per cent of all taxation. Boris was wrong. When it comes to numerical rather than verbal dexterity, he is not a ‘top cornflake’.

COVID-19: Everything You Need to Know About the Corona Virus and the Race for the Vaccine by Michael Mosley

Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, lockdown, microbiome, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, social distancing

Day 60 On February 28th Sub-Saharan Africa had its first confirmed case when an Italian citizen, who had returned to Nigeria from Milan, tested positive for the virus. Day 64 By March 3rd hundreds of Italians had died from Covid-19 and Italian hospitals were beginning to buckle under the pressure of so many sick and elderly patients. In the UK the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, had clearly not yet fully bought into the idea of social distancing. He said, at a press conference, “I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody.” Day 72 On March 11th the WHO acknowledged that the virus was spreading uncontrollably and that the world was in the grip of a serious pandemic.

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Although the governor said in a press conferences while announcing the changes, “This is not a permanent state, this is a moment in time,” he did not specify when the state would reopen. By April 20th the instructions to people to stay at home, which began in California in March, had been taken up by almost all US states. Which meant that at least 316 million people were self-isolating at home. Day 84 A week later, on March 23rd, Boris Johnson put the UK into lockdown. All nonessential businesses were to close and people were told that they would only be allowed to leave their homes for limited reasons, such as shopping for food, going out for exercise once a day, and traveling for work “if absolutely necessary.” By then most other European countries had gone into lockdown.

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Day 87 On March 26th experts from Imperial College published an updated study that suggested that, with social distancing and measures to protect the vulnerable, global deaths from the virus could be cut from 40 million to less than 10 million.18 Day 94 On April 2nd the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 passed the million mark. At least 50,000 people had died. Within two weeks both those numbers would double. Day 100 After coming down with Covid-19, Boris Johnson was moved to intensive care. There was real concern as to whether he would survive. Although reasonably fit, he is in his 50s, male, and overweight, all of which are risk factors. America was now the epicenter of the pandemic and more than 2000 people were dying every day. Millions were forced to apply for unemployment benefits.

The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business intelligence, central bank independence, circulation of elites, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, Corn Laws, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, COVID-19, creative destruction, critical race theory, David Brooks, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, feminist movement, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, intangible asset, invention of gunpowder, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jim Simons, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microaggression, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-oil, pre–internet, public intellectual, publish or perish, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, sexual politics, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, spinning jenny, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, three-martini lunch, Tim Cook: Apple, transfer pricing, Tyler Cowen, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators, women in the workforce

Bill Clinton declared that ‘all Americans have not just a right but a solemn responsibility to rise as far as their God-given talents and determination can take them’, a formula reiterated by Barack Obama.1 Tony Blair repeatedly identified New Labour with meritocracy.2 David Cameron declared that Britain is an Aspiration Nation and that his government was on the side of ‘all those who work hard and want to get on.’3 Boris Johnson praised meritocracy for ‘allowing the right cornflakes to get to the top of the packet’.4 Such praise for meritocracy is hardly surprising: opinion polls repeatedly show that large majorities of people are deeply opposed to interfering with the meritocratic principle. A Pew poll in 2019, for example, found that 73 per cent of Americans, including 62 per cent of African-Americans, say that colleges should refrain from taking race or ethnicity into account when making decisions about student admissions.5 Meritocracy straddles the East–West divide.

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As well as declaring himself a ‘very stable genius’, Donald Trump has repeatedly boasted that he has ‘a very good brain’ and a ‘high IQ’. During his first run for the presidency back in 1987, Joe Biden ticked off a voter who asked him about his educational qualifications by retorting, ‘I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do … I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours.’8 Boris Johnson has been known to rag David Cameron because he was a King’s Scholar at Eton, a sure sign of mental ability, while Cameron was an Oppidan, or regular fee payer. This is not just froth. The meritocratic idea is shaping society from top to bottom. A growing proportion of great fortunes are in the hands of people with outstanding brain power: computer geeks such as Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) or financial wizards such as George Soros (who pioneered hedge funds) and Jim Simons (who helped to found computer-driven ‘quant investing’).9 The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton and makes a point of surrounding himself with academic super-achievers.

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The director of the Princeton Election Consortium promised, a week before the election, to ‘eat a bug’ if Trump won more than 240 electoral votes.5 Whether he did or not is, alas, not recorded. Populist leaders have struck back against the media’s cosmopolitan bias not just because they think doing so is a good source of votes but also because they are affronted by the way that journalists’ ideological sympathies distort their coverage. Boris Johnson denounced the Financial Times and the Economist for their negative coverage of Brexit at the 2017 Tory Party Conference. German populists have repeatedly vilified the Lügenpresse – the lying press. American bloggers routinely denounce the ‘lamestream media’. No one has been so skilled at taking the war to the enemy as Donald Trump.

The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World by William Drozdiak

Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, centre right, cloud computing, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, Socratic dialogue, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, UNCLOS, working poor

Austria’s Freedom Party entered government as part of a center-right coalition and took control, for a while, of the Interior Ministry. Poland’s Law and Justice Party solidified its grip on power by cracking down on dissent. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán won reelection on an anti-immigrant platform. Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party emerged as the strongest opposition force in the Bundestag. And Boris Johnson, a leading Euroskeptic and EU antagonist, succeeded Theresa May as Britain’s prime minister. Far-right parties secured a foothold in twenty-three out of twenty-eight legislatures across Europe. But perhaps no other manifestation of growing nationalism in Europe matched the remarkable ascendancy of Salvini, who became almost overnight the dominant figure in Italian politics and the most galvanizing personality among pan-European populists.

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“I believe in it very deeply, and I don’t want Brexit to come and block us on this.”19 When Prime Minister Theresa May failed on three occasions to persuade the House of Commons to approve the detailed agreement that her government had painstakingly worked out with the EU, she was forced to resign by intransigent opponents within her own Tory Party. Boris Johnson, her former foreign secretary and a prominent advocate for the Leave campaign, won the succession battle and immediately moved into 10 Downing Street. On his first day in office, Johnson vowed to take Britain out of Europe by the end of October 2019, “no ifs or buts.”20 But Johnson was soon forced to abandon the Halloween deadline and seek another extension from the European Union to hold rare December elections.

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While Britain dithered, Macron warned that Europe was becoming distracted and missing opportunities to expand its economic growth and influence in the world. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and the United States were using divide-and-rule tactics to exploit Europe’s stasis for their own purposes. Macron became infuriated by the cavalier way in which Boris Johnson and his merry band of “Little Englanders” misled the British people about the impact of Brexit and held the rest of Europe hostage to their whims. “The trap is in the lie and irresponsibility that can destroy the European Union. Who told the British people the truth about their post-Brexit future?

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life by David Mitchell

bank run, Boris Johnson, British Empire, cakes and ale, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, Etonian, eurozone crisis, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, Julian Assange, lateral thinking, Northern Rock, Ocado, offshore financial centre, payday loans, plutocrats, profit motive, Russell Brand, sensible shoes, Skype, The Wisdom of Crowds, WikiLeaks

From Margaret Thatcher’s Yes Minister sketch to Tony Blair’s “Am I Bovvered?” appearance, their attempts to associate themselves with humour have generally been awful. And the reason for this is that they don’t really care what’s funny. Being funny involves taking risks, and no politician (except possibly Boris Johnson) can understand why anyone would take the slightest risk of public disapproval in order to get a laugh. They’re about power – they don’t understand the instinct to amuse, and that’s why Vince Cable’s pretty unfunny remark about Gordon Brown being transformed “from Stalin to Mr Bean” has led to his being acclaimed a great parliamentary wit.

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The whole event would barely be worthy of note if it weren’t for the fact that they shot him in the back. But then the gentleman is quite old and has suffered two strokes in the last few years – so the comparatively slow rate at which he was fleeing was probably taken as provocation. Incidentally, if you do get Tasered by the police, it’s advisable to watch your language. As Boris Johnson has pointed out, it’s now an offence to swear at a police officer. So should you incur a public-spirited 50,000-volt warning shot – perhaps for brandishing your pension book in an aggressive manner or because a young PC has mistaken your tartan shopping trolley for a piece of field artillery – don’t accidentally shout “Oh fuck!”

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This was extremely funny news and I am convinced it will have brought immeasurably more pleasure to many more people than all of the grotty ready meals that were recalled could ever have done had they solely contained ground-up cartilage and ligament of the advertised species rather than the macerated fragments of other, more glamorous, quadrupeds. You may disagree with my definition of funny news. What’s funny about incompetence, malpractice and dishonesty in the preparation of our food, you might ask. You might think this is simply a grim example of something going seriously wrong. Funny news, you might say, is when Boris Johnson gets his balls caught in a harness or Kanye West sues the online currency “Coinye West” for exploiting his image. In my experience, news like that is too obviously amusing to be lastingly funny. You can’t make a joke about it because the story is already a joke. You can laugh once, because it’s daft, then it’s over.

How to Be Right: In a World Gone Wrong by James O'Brien

Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, clockwatching, collective bargaining, death of newspapers, Donald Trump, fake news, game design, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, mass immigration, Neil Armstrong, plutocrats, post-industrial society, QAnon, ride hailing / ride sharing, sexual politics, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, young professional

Their bespoke, unchallenged diet of ‘news’, augmented we now know by Facebook algorithms and deliberately fake stories, is so unvaried that the possibility that it might be largely bogus is never entertained. It’s also worth pointing out here how easy it is to confine criticism of face veils to the garment rather than the human being wearing one. When the former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, elected to compare these human beings to ‘bank robbers’ and ‘letterboxes’ in August 2018fn2, he was feeding the anger and confusion of people like Martin. It’s hard to imagine what good he thought might come of it. One of the most memorable calls I have ever taken came during the brief heyday of the so-called English Defence League.

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It’s not always easy to remember that anger should be directed at the dupers as opposed to the duped, but on this occasion it was simple enough. James: It’s not funny is it? The pound’s the lowest it’s been since 1985 and I just asked you to name any law, just one, and you say bananas. We both know that the bananas line was a lie made up by Boris Johnson. Remind me which side he was on?’ Andy: Well, he was out for himself. See? Andy is not stupid. He’s a bright, entrepreneurial professional with his own young company and an eye on the future. He hasn’t mentioned immigration (yet) and doesn’t subscribe to some bogus nineteenth-century notion of English exceptionalism.

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On rare childhood visits to the capital from Kidderminster, my little sister and I considered a ride on one of their pull-down seats to be as much of a ritual as popping into Harrods’ toy department. So when drivers first started telling me how unhappy they were with Uber in 2014 I was keen not to let dewy-eyed sympathies cloud my judgment. The then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, termed them Luddites, in an attempt to portray them as dinosaur-like opponents of progress. Horse and carriage drivers, went the argument, had objected similarly to the introduction of the petrol engine but common sense soon prevailed. But the more I talked to cab drivers, the more I realised that Uber, and other euphemistically termed ‘disruptive technology companies’ like Deliveroo, were actually at the vanguard of a rather serious assault on established commercial norms.

Big Capital: Who Is London For? by Anna Minton

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Airbnb, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collateralized debt obligation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, gentrification, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, illegal immigration, Kickstarter, land bank, land value tax, market design, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, payday loans, post-truth, quantitative easing, rent control, rent gap, Right to Buy, Russell Brand, sovereign wealth fund, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, urban renewal, working poor

Terrorism was another factor which ranked as marginally more of a problem in New York than in London.16 THE MONACO GROUP In Kensington and Chelsea, home to around 4,900 Ultra High Net Worth Individals,17 I had arranged to meet Daniel Moylan. Moylan was formerly deputy leader of the council and a past adviser to Boris Johnson and remains a councillor of twenty-seven years’ standing. Walking down Kensington High Street on my way to meet him, I passed what used to be Ken Market, once a bohemian magnet for punks with their pink mohicans, who lolled about outside the indoor market when I was a child. The market catered to every subculture of music and fashion and was where Freddie Mercury had a stall before Queen became famous.

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Under this system, housebuilders are legally bound to work with local authorities to build a percentage of affordable housing in all new developments. Over the last generation some housing has been built in this way, but nowhere near the numbers needed, and the increasingly Orwellian definition of ‘affordable’ means that much of the small amount provided is far from affordable for most. This is particularly acute in London. In 2013 Mayor Boris Johnson’s ‘London Plan’ redefined ‘affordable rent’ to mean up to 80 per cent of market rate, while the Housing and Planning Act 2016 deemed that affordable housing includes Starter Homes for up to £450,000. These are not remotely affordable even to many people on relatively high incomes. Now even this has come under threat with the introduction of the ‘viability assessment’.

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Fewer homes will in turn add more pressure on a housing market already unable to cope and will drive further increases in rents. Opting to pursue the incremental change route is close to aspects of the policies pursued by London’s Labour mayors, Ken Livingstone and since 2016 Sadiq Khan. As for Boris Johnson, while Gordon Brown was in power, he too followed this route before altering course dramatically when the Conservative-led coalition was elected and his old rival Livingstone was out of the picture. When Boris was fighting against Ken to win his second term, he got headlines for condemning the ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’ which saw people on housing benefit being pushed out of London.2 But as chapter 4 described, under his watch this trend – which he stopped referring to in his second term – became far more entrenched, and not long after he was elected he was making lavish declarations of approval for the oligarchs’ cranes which he described as ‘marvellous’.3 The main thrust of Livingstone’s approach, which Sadiq Khan is indicating he would like to emulate, was to raise the numbers of affordable housing that developers have to provide.

The Story of Crossrail by Christian Wolmar

Ada Lovelace, autonomous vehicles, Beeching cuts, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Crossrail, data acquisition, driverless car, Kickstarter, megacity, megaproject

But bring in the ‘wider economic benefits’ such as job creation, the taxes paid during construction and economic growth stimulated by the line, which total between £39bn and £65bn, and the benefit–cost ratio zooms up to between 4 and 5. A no-brainer to fund, surely. Livingstone and Brown had agreed on the core funding, but Livingstone departed the scene when he lost the 2008 London mayoral election to Boris Johnson, who became the first Conservative to hold the post. Although famously lazy and averse to detail, Johnson was enthusiastic about Crossrail. As one insider put it, ‘he did not play games about Crossrail, he backed it and helped keep up the pressure’.6 But even with the money in the bag (sort of), not everyone was convinced.

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The site was needed for the expanding Tottenham Court Road station, one of the most cramped in central London and constrained by the proximity of the huge, thirty-three-storey Centre Point, which itself was in the throes of being changed from office to residential use. The first construction work took place at Canary Wharf station on 15 May 2009, at a ceremony attended by a pair of mismatched politicians, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and London mayor Boris Johnson. Transport minister Lord Adonis, London’s Transport commissioner Peter Hendy, Crossrail chairman Douglas Oakervee and Canary Wharf Ltd chief executive George Iacobescu were also there to watch the first of the nearly 20 metre-long (65.5 ft) steel piles, which underpin the massive station, being driven in.

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Work was hardly underway and no major contracts had yet been let. When the bill went through Parliament, the design work was only around 30 per cent complete, and while there had been considerable honing of the project’s finances in the intervening eighteen months, the cost estimates were still necessarily vague. Boris Johnson, the London mayor, who was now looking to the mayoral election in 2012, piled on the pressure to save the project. He held a series of meetings with Prime Minister David Cameron and George Osborne, arguing that, if the project were scrapped, it would scupper his chances of being re-elected. ‘Savings’ of £1.6bn were therefore found to satisfy the Treasury, half of which came from ‘reducing risks by simplifying integration works, re-sequencing work and reducing scope, saving £800 million’.2 This amount included the £400m, mentioned in Chapter 7, that Transport for London had set aside because of potential risks for the Underground’s interface with Crossrail; it also included savings from a decision not to create a direct connection from Crossrail to the District and Circle Line platforms of the London Underground at Paddington station, which would have involved a particularly fiddly and expensive passageway.

The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet by Arthur Turrell

Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, Donald Trump, Eddington experiment, energy security, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ITER tokamak, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, New Journalism, nuclear winter, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, precautionary principle, Project Plowshare, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tunguska event

., “First Physics Results from the MAST Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak,” Physics of Plasmas 8 (2001): 2101–106. 23. “Boris Johnson Jokes About UK Being on the Verge of Nuclear Fusion,” New Scientist (2019), https://www.newscientist.com/article/2218570-boris-johnson-jokes-about-uk-being-on-the-verge-of-nuclear-fusion/#ixzz66tYUwh6k; P. Ball, “A Lightbulb Moment for Nuclear Fusion?,” Guardian (2019), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/27/nuclear-fusion-research-power-generation-iter-jet-step-carbon-neutral-2050-boris-johnson; E. Gibney, “UK Hatches Plan to Build World’s First Fusion Power Plant,” Nature (2019), https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03039-9. 24.

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“A Tool for Tracking Millions of Parts,” Iter Newsline (2014), https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/1887; Space Shuttle Era Facts, NASA (2011), https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/566250main_2011.07.05%20SHUTTLE%20ERA%20FACTS.pdf. 6. “Stephen Hawking: Why We Should Embrace Fusion Power,” BBC News (2016), https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161117-stephen-hawking-why-we-should-embrace-fusion-power. 7. “Boris Johnson Jokes About UK Being on the Verge of Nuclear Fusion,” New Scientist (2019), https://www.newscientist.com/article/2218570-boris-johnson-jokes-about-uk-being-on-the-verge-of-nuclear-fusion/#ixzz66tYUwh6k. 8. R. F. Post, “Controlled Fusion Research—An Application of the Physics of High Temperature Plasmas,” Reviews of Modern Physics 28 (1956): 338. 9. R. Herman, Fusion: The Search for Endless Energy (Cambridge University Press, 1990). 10.

The Skripal Files by Mark Urban

Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, false flag, Jeremy Corbyn, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Skype

In its modern form it is a windowless place, electronically swept to prevent bugging, and plugged into a wide range of communications equipment including secure phones and video-teleconferencing facilities. Around thirty people arrived that morning to find Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, and a couple of officials waiting. Tall, precise in manner, and already well briefed, she would be chairing the session. Among the others filing in were Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, and two dozen other ministers and officials. None of them harboured any doubt that Russia was responsible for what had happened in Salisbury. But in appointing Rudd to chair the meeting, the Prime Minister was concerned firstly to deal with urgent practical questions arising from the poisoning and secondly not to rush into publicly blaming Russia.

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But in appointing Rudd to chair the meeting, the Prime Minister was concerned firstly to deal with urgent practical questions arising from the poisoning and secondly not to rush into publicly blaming Russia. But one figure at the Cobra table on the 7th had already come very close to doing that. The meeting followed remarks in the House of Commons the previous day by Boris Johnson. He and the Home Secretary, entrenched on opposite sides of the Brexit debate, were also quite different political animals: Rudd the more deliberate and measured, Johnson given to rhetorical flourishes and shooting from the hip. ‘It is too early to speculate as to the precise nature of the crime or attempted crime that has taken place in Salisbury,’ Johnson told MPs, ‘but I know members will have their suspicions.

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The investigation focused on who was about in the Maltings and Zizzi’s restaurant in the hope it might quickly yield suspects. As we will see, things would go very differently. There were a number of reasons why her initial readout was more cautious in attributing blame than the Foreign Secretary. She wanted to put clear blue water between herself and Boris Johnson, evidently. But she and those briefing her were also conditioned by the investigators’ desire to bring people to trial for Salisbury, and to avoid saying anything that, by pointing a finger before the evidence was clear, might prejudice the process. In this way the early reactions of the Home and Foreign Secretaries reflected the classic division between evidence and intelligence.

Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals by Oliver Bullough

Alan Greenspan, Bellingcat, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Downton Abbey, Etonian, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, Global Witness, John Bercow, Julian Assange, light touch regulation, lockdown, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, surveillance capitalism, the High Line, WikiLeaks

This is not to say, however, that British politicians are not interested in some Eastern Europeans. They very much are. And in the next chapter I’m going to look at the interest they showed in one man in particular, the kind of man who could afford a lot of butler’s fees. 7 DOWN THE TUBES When Boris Johnson – the journalist-turned-politician who is, at the time of writing, still prime minister – was Mayor of London, he used to hold regular public events where ordinary Londoners could ask him questions. They were billed as exercises in transparency, which no doubt they were, but they also gave a man who liked performing an opportunity to perform.

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When the government was asked to choose between helping an entrepreneur to realise an eccentric dream that would enrich its capital city in a truly unique way or selling an asset to the highest bidder, there was only going to be one winner, and it wasn’t going to be Ajit Chambers. It’s a well hidden story that requires some excavating. So, as Boris Johnson put it in that first encounter with Chambers, we’re going underground. First of all, we need to dig into where the money that bought the ghost station came from. To understand that, we need to go back in time to the days of the Cold War, when the Communist Party still wielded unchecked power over Russia and the other Soviet republics.

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But that was a rare exception to the general governmental willingness to accept money from anywhere, which has so distinguished Britain since it got started in the butlering business. In 2020 Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee published a report on Russian influence in the UK. The report failed to gain as much attention as it deserved thanks in part to Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissing it as an attempt to delegitimise the Brexit referendum. This was a shame because it was a thoughtful analysis of the kind of blind spot that has led Britain to accept money directly from Russian oligarchs, as well as from Russia-allied businessmen like Firtash, without looking into where it comes from.

Among the Mosques: A Journey Across Muslim Britain by Ed Husain

affirmative action, Ayatollah Khomeini, battle of ideas, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Donald Trump, glass ceiling, Jeremy Corbyn, Khyber Pass, Mark Zuckerberg, Ronald Reagan, Shamima Begum

As we head for the airport, I ask Oliver if he has been to London recently. ‘Years ago, probably not since 1980.’ ‘How do you feel about this government in London now?’ I ask. ‘Theresa May and Boris Johnson are only there because of our support from the DUP. Northern Ireland is the power behind the throne.’ ‘Right,’ I say. ‘And what about the new chancellor, Sajid Javid? Or the home secretary, who’s responsible for security around here, Priti Patel? Neither of them is white. Even Boris Johnson has Turkish ancestry. How do people around here feel about that?’ He doesn’t answer. There’s something deeply stubborn about Oliver, almost verging on denial of reality.

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First, back in 2006, there was the former MP Jack Straw’s uneasy questioning of a woman in his constituency wearing the full veil in a private meeting. Later, in 2017, there was the uproar over former Prime Minister Theresa May’s support for women to wear the hijab ‘without fear’. Then, finally, there was the backlash faced by Boris Johnson in 2018 over his comments about women in burkas ‘looking like letterboxes’. Throughout all this time, Faiza and I discussed this controversy that was so close to her heart and appearance. After debating the correctness of wearing a face veil for more than a decade, she finally decided to remove hers after leaving her job at an Islamic girls’ school several years ago.

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Ibn Khaldun was no abstract theorist: he was famed for his practical thinking. When the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane was on the outskirts of Damascus in 1401, he summoned Ibn Khaldun to converse for hours about what causes the rise and fall of civilisations. President Ronald Reagan, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have all cited Ibn Khaldun, but none has tried to unpack his insight on the rise and fall of countries and civilisations based on the energy and synergy of group-feeling. In the modern world, the idea that comes closest to the force that Ibn Khaldun identified is patriotism.

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze

2021 United States Capitol attack, air freight, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blue-collar work, Bob Geldof, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, friendly fire, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, junk bonds, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Potemkin village, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative easing, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social distancing, South China Sea, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, too big to fail, TSMC, universal basic income, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, yield curve

On February 10 the administration released a budget proposal that called for deep cuts to WHO and global health funding. Meanwhile, for commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, China’s crisis was an opportunity to encourage manufacturers to return to America’s safer shores.19 In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration was similarly distracted. On January 31, an evacuation flight brought eighty-three Britons home from Wuhan, and the first case in Britain, a Chinese visitor, was identified in York in the North of England.20 But the headlines of the day were dominated by Brexit. On January 31, Britain left the EU.

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The International Labour Organization estimated that as of early April 2020, 81 percent of the world’s workforce were under one or other type of restriction.48 It was staggering and, for many, impossible to accept. Around the world, opposition expressed itself in national idiolects. In France and Italy, the radical left railed against the normalization of the “state of exception” and the spectacular accretion of power it conferred on the government.49 Perversely, Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed: “We’re taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub. And I can understand how people feel about that . . . I know how difficult this is, how it seems to go against the freedom-loving instincts of the British people.”50 In Brazil, President Bolsonaro, a skeptic from the start, continued to rant against lockdown measures.

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On Monday the sixteenth, it became clear that this was dangerously complacent.39 The foreign exchange market, where currencies are traded, is the biggest market in the world. Despite Britain’s faded status as a financial power, the place where most transactions are booked is the City of London. In 2019, on an average day, turnover ran to $6.6 trillion. In the week starting Monday, March 16, London was in turmoil. Boris Johnson’s laissez-faire coronavirus strategy was in tatters. The report from the Imperial College team made it clear beyond doubt that there needed to be an immediate shutdown. Would Downing Street bite the bullet? No major Western metropolis had yet gone into full shutdown—not London, not New York. On Wednesday, March 18, on the terminals in the banking towers of Canary Wharf there was only one trade: Sell every currency in the world.

The City on the Thames by Simon Jenkins

Ascot racecourse, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, Brexit referendum, British Empire, clean water, computerized trading, congestion charging, Corn Laws, cross-subsidies, Crossrail, deindustrialization, estate planning, Frank Gehry, gentrification, housing crisis, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, John Snow's cholera map, light touch regulation, Louis Blériot, negative equity, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, Peace of Westphalia, place-making, railway mania, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, strikebreaker, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce

Recession Years: 1970–1980 Immigration – The Common Market – Rise of the drugs trade – The Motorway Box – Battle for Covent Garden 24. Metropolis Renascent: 1980–1997 Thatcher vs Livingstone – IRA bombs – Docklands development – Big Bang – The decline of the council house 25. Going for Broke: 1997–2008 Blair and the mayoralty – Post-9/11 threats – Livingstone’s skyline 26. Constructs of Vanity: 2008 to the present Boris Johnson – 2011 riots – 2012 Olympics – High-rise London – Whose city? – Brexit Epilogue Photographs A Timeline of London’s History Author’s Note Further Reading About the Author Index List of Illustrations Section 1 1. Reconstructed view of Roman London, c.120, by Peter Froste. © Peter Froste/Museum of London 2.

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. © David Granick/Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives 68. The Barbican, c.1970, illustration by the LCC, from Peter Hall, London 2000, 1971. Private collection 69. Rubbish in Leicester Square, 1979. AP/Shutterstock 70. Ken Livingstone at County Hall, 1982. Daily Mail/Shutterstock 71. Boris Johnson launching London’s first cycle-hire scheme, 2010. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images 72. Canary Wharf from Mudchute, Isle of Dogs, 2012. Alamy 73. Coal Drops Yard redevelopment, King’s Cross, 2019. Urban Land Institute 74. View of the City from Waterloo Bridge, 2019. Guy Bell/Alamy 75. Notting Hill carnival, 2016.

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Over the next decade, London’s local councils lost between 40 and 50 per cent of their central government grants. This was to cost them 37 per cent of revenue per head, against 29 per cent in the rest of the country. In the recession year of 2008, the London mayoralty passed from Livingstone to the Conservative Boris Johnson. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Johnson was a marked contrast to Livingstone’s ‘cheeky chappie’ image, but he shared his predecessor’s unconventional humour and lack of cant, virtues in civic leadership. Nothing about his past, his classical metaphors, incessant gaffes or colourful private life seemed to dent his popularity.

The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost Its Way by Steve Richards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, David Brooks, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, driverless car, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, falling living standards, full employment, gentrification, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Neil Kinnock, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon

In the immediate aftermath of the referendum that they thought they would lose, the Conservative politicians Boris Johnson and Michael Gove seemed pale with fearful apprehension. Suddenly they had to make sense of the words uttered with vague defiance during the campaign. They were not euphoric. They had had an easy time of it on the outside; now there were deep and complex consequences as they became the insiders they always were. The leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, was euphoric, but he did not stay on to face the consequences. He took the easy route by announcing his resignation. Of the leading campaigners in the ‘Out’ campaign, only Boris Johnson plays a role, as Foreign Secretary, in what form Brexit will take.

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Marine Le Pen comes from a highly political family and is a successful lawyer. She has not yet had the misfortune to be elected, but she is still part of the political elite. UKIP’s Nigel Farage was a wealthy stockbroker from Surrey and a member of the European Parliament. The leading figure for the ‘Out’ campaign Boris Johnson was educated at Eton and Oxford, was a former editor of the weekly Spectator magazine and a former Mayor of London. The leader of the Dutch far-right party, Geert Wilders, has been a member of the Dutch parliament for years. Trump has been a famous multimillionaire entrepreneur and celebrity for decades.

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Even those Conservative Cabinet ministers who joined the Brexit campaign and were theoretically advocates of a small-state liberal conservatism began to face the logic of their other arguments and put the case for bigger government. Nigel Farage and the two most prominent Cabinet ministers campaigning for ‘Out’, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, argued that the state must intervene to curtail the free movement of labour. That was their most overt campaign for government intervention. Forget about their support for the purity and efficacy of markets. Forget about their wariness of government as a highly active regulator of markets. They wanted the state to decide how the labour market should work.

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, autism spectrum disorder, bank run, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, citizen journalism, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, disinformation, don't be evil, Edward Snowden, Etonian, eurozone crisis, falling living standards, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, glass ceiling, hiring and firing, housing crisis, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, James Dyson, Jon Ronson, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, light touch regulation, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, night-watchman state, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, open borders, Overton Window, plutocrats, popular capitalism, post-war consensus, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stakhanovite, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transfer pricing, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent

Other key bankrollers include property millionaires such as David Rowland, hedge-fund boss Stanley Fink, May Makhzoumi (wife of the businessman Fouad Makhzoumi) and venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft, a major investor in the legal loan-shark firm Wonga. Australian strategist Lynton Crosby has played a key role in British Conservative politics, a role he has juggled with his lobbying for private interests. After helping to mastermind the successful London mayoral campaign of Tory Boris Johnson in 2012, Crosby was taken by the re-elected mayor on a five-day business jaunt to the United Arab Emirates, allowing the Australian spin-doctor to promote his own lobbying firm, even though many far larger businesses were not invited by the mayor. Crosby’s business dealings came under fresh scrutiny when, in November 2012, he got a new job with the Conservative Party leadership.

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The language used was deliberately inflammatory, attempting to paint the Labour leader as a dangerous extremist. Miliband’s speech ‘raised the hairs on the back of my neck’, declared John Cridland, the director of the CBI, the big-business federation. According to the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Miliband’s commitment to a crackdown on land-banking amounted to ‘Mugabe-style expropriations’, while Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, saw it as ‘a Stalinist attack on property rights’. Miliband, frothed David Cameron, wanted to live in ‘a Marxist universe’; according to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, resolutely on script, Miliband had voiced ‘essentially the argument Karl Marx made in Das Kapital’.

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The Daily Telegraph’s Benedict Brogan knows of several examples of journalists who socialize with politicians, go on holiday with them, and are even godparents to their children and vice versa (though he refuses to break anyone’s confidence by revealing details). But what helps cement a coherent elite above all else is a revolving door between the media and politics. Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson straddles both worlds. He is the former editor of The Spectator and is currently a weekly columnist for the Daily Telegraph, once describing his £250,000 salary at the newspaper as ‘chickenfeed’. It is a worthy investment by the Barclay Brothers should he ever become Prime Minister. One of The Times’ star columnists, Matthew Parris, is a former Conservative MP with experience of working directly for Margaret Thatcher; another, Phillip Collins, is Tony Blair’s former speechwriter.

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman

affirmative action, Boris Johnson, crowdsourcing, deskilling, Donald Trump, gender pay gap, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, old-boy network, Russell Brand

Only a handful of reporters attend Commons sessions outside Prime Minister’s Questions, key statements on European summits and the like, so it’s often easy to become the ‘one to watch’ when no one actually watches to see if you’re much cop. Meanwhile, hacks will want to have lunch with you to build a good relationship before you enter a ministry. If you’re good company over lunch, they will warm to you and write you up as ‘effective’, even if this only means ‘effective at gossiping and eating pudding’. Other MPs, such as Boris Johnson, use their considerable wit to build a popular profile by going on shows such as Have I Got News for You. This only works if you are firstly actually funny and secondly able to laugh at yourself, as politicians are often invited onto these shows to be roundly mocked. But Johnson and Labour’s Jess Phillips are MPs who have made themselves far better known than their colleagues simply by being able to work outside the Bubble.

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Gove has entered every government department with three strategic objectives for his time there, and has focused on delivering those above everything else. As a result, he has gained a reputation for being a radical reformer, even among those who despise his reforms. Other cabinet ministers have less of a serious focus on their brief. While Boris Johnson undoubtedly enjoys the international exposure that being Foreign Secretary gives him, he has struggled to grasp that this exposure means that every comment he makes could have serious implications. He failed to get on top of the detail of a case involving a British national, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who had been imprisoned in Iran, and ended up inflaming tensions still further by telling a select committee in 2017 that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in the country to teach journalism, something the regime instantly seized upon.

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But many others can’t quite rid themselves of their social media addiction. One former member of Ed Miliband’s team when he was Labour leader says that they kept trying to delete the Twitter app from his phone, only for him to reinstall it late at night to read what people were saying about him. Even Boris Johnson, who gives the impression in public of being comfortable in his own skin, went through a phase of reading the comments below the line on online pieces about him. I often observe a spike in MPs replying to trolls late at night, which suggests that politicians are logging on to Twitter as they lie in bed.

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

Unemployment rate drops to 3.5%, lowest since 1969. 10/11/19—President Trump announces US/China have reached an outline of a deal for phase 1 of trade negotiations. 10/11/19—Fed announces plans to buy $60B in T-bills each month. New actions are “purely technical.” 10/28/19—EC President Donald Tusk and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson agree to “flextension”: Brexit deadline pushed from month-end to Jan. 31, 2020. 10/30/19—Fed cuts rates by 25 bps (1.5–1.75%), third cut in four months. Powell wants to pause unless the growth outlook deteriorates. Month-end: UST 10s at 1.69%; S&P +2.2%; Nasdaq +3.7%. I couldn’t take it anymore.

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I meet my driver and hop in the car. The radio is on and I hear “Orrrrrderrrrrrr. Orrrrrdeerrrrrr. I have listened carefully to the application from the right honorable gentleman, and I’m satisfied that the matter raised by him is proper to be discussed under Standing Order Number …” It’s Brexit vote day. Boris Johnson is trying to ram his deal through. The currency has already popped 7% in the last week in the hope that this gets done, and we’ve been adding to our position the entire way up. It’s eight o’clock in the morning and BBC News is already in full gear. This will definitely be more entertaining than the Arsenal match later today.

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The Bank of Canada (BoC), BoE, BOJ, and ECB coordinate to increase dollar liquidity via swap lines. 3/16/20—Italian government approves a 25B euro emergency stimulus package. 3/17/20—EU bans most travelers from outside the bloc. 3/17/20—Fed announces creation of Commercial Paper Funding Facility (unsecured short-term loans for small businesses). 3/18/20—ECB announces 750B euro Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program (PEPP) that includes nonfinancial corporate debt; eases collateral standards. 3/19/20—Dollar swap lines extended to more countries, including some emerging markets. 3/19/20—California issues statewide stay-at-home order. 3/23/20—Fed further expands QE to include MBS; three new lending facilities: PMCCF and SMCCF to support large employers; revival of TALF to provide credit for existing corporate debt. 3/24/20—Tokyo Olympics postponed for a year. 3/26/20—Jobless claims spike to 3.28M for week ending March 21. 3/27/20—Boris Johnson infected. 3/27/20—Trump signs $2T CARES Act; $1,200 checks to individuals. 3/30/20—More states announce shelter-at-home directives: VA, MD, DC. 3/31/20—Fed announces another liquidity measure to temporarily swap foreign-held treasuries into dollars. Month-end: UST 10s at 0.67%; ∆193; S&P -12.4%; Nasdaq -10.1%; dollar index +0.9%.

Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-racist Comedian by Boyle, Frankie

banking crisis, Boris Johnson, call centre, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, David Attenborough, Dennis Tito, discovery of penicillin, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Etonian, falling living standards, Google Earth, heat death of the universe, high-speed rail, hive mind, Jeffrey Epstein, low interest rates, negative equity, Ocado, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, payday loans, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Red Clydeside, Right to Buy, Skype, Snapchat, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, wage slave

At every Tory Conference the party outlines its priorities: building a Deathstar; killing Harry Potter; and creating a doorway into our dimension so the Many-Angled Ones can harvest our souls to the accompaniment of several previously unreleased Fleetwood Mac albums. Boris Johnson usually gives a keynote speech that sounds like a Labrador having a ketamine-induced psychotic episode. And all the Tories speak of the Lib Dems like a celebrity speaks about the heavily sedated sibling they’ve sprung from hospital long enough to make up the numbers on Family Fortunes. It’s been said that Boris Johnson doesn’t have the skills to become prime minister. He doesn’t seem to have the skills to get dressed, but it happens. Sort of. Many Tories want Boris to lead them into the next election.

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Miliband has revealed he’s afraid his young sons can access violent porn on his smartphone. To prevent this from happening do what I do – before giving the phone to the kids make sure you’ve deleted the contents of the history page. I was surprised to learn Ed Miliband went to the same primary school as Boris Johnson. I’d naturally assumed both were failed prototypes for a Geppetto-like toymaker before he successfully made a real boy. Miliband’s parents fled Nazi Germany. But let’s not forget Cameron’s forebears were some of the first to describe Hitler as a monster – after he drank claret with the fish course when over for dinner.

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Perhaps it’s even time for an award that’s the opposite of a knighthood. Just so we can fully show our gratitude to bankers and the like, the Queen could tap their shoulders with a dirty mop and blow a raspberry, before they wriggle out the room on their stomachs while Prince Philip flicks them with a wet towel. Boris Johnson’s warned the government that new bank regulations could risk ‘killing the goose’. I’m guessing that’s from the expression ‘Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs made from all that money we’ve all already fed the goose anyway.’ The deadline for the banks to make the changes is 2019, giving us the structure that’s needed to avoid a second banking crisis, just after a second banking crisis has already taken place.

Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party by David Kogan

Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Brixton riot, centre right, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, falling living standards, financial independence, full employment, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, open borders, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War

He could have done it in different ways, he may have got credit for being himself about it much more vociferously, but he couldn’t. By 2013, the need to get a clear focus and a full policy slate also meant new people were joining the team. Simon Fletcher, having run two successful campaigns for Ken Livingstone in London and then two losing mayoral elections against Boris Johnson in 2008 and 2012, was brought into the Miliband office by Anna Yearley. It was a joke in the office that Ed Miliband was the most left-wing person in it until Simon Fletcher joined, but Fletcher was to play an important role with the unions over the next two years. Patrick Loughran and Spencer Livermore of the Blair and Brown leadership teams were also approached.

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The known leavers, Iain Duncan Smith (who resigned from the cabinet before the referendum), Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers and John Whittingdale were not particularly prominent among the public. Michael Gove joined them in February, despite his close relationship with David Cameron. Three weeks later, Boris Johnson announced his last-minute conversion to the cause. Having taken the decision, Gove and Johnson had no choice but to lead the Leave campaign with vigour. Cameron and Osborne countered this with Project Fear, which depended on a combination of economic arguments and the fear of the unknown. Pushing the economic consequences of leaving the UK in Scotland in 2014 had helped achieve a ‘No’ result in the Scottish Independence referendum.

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I thought they were more organised. Amidst all this turmoil, the political world continued to revolve. On 30 June 2016, two days after Labour’s vote of no confidence, the Conservative party nominations for leader closed and Michael Gove completed his cycle of turning on his friends by announcing he would stand against Boris Johnson who immediately pulled out. Gove had been his campaign manager up to that point. The Conservative soap opera continued into the following week with two ballots culminating in Theresa May beating Andrea Leadsom on 7 July. Four days later, May was leader of the Conservative party and on 13 July, the new prime minister.

Lonely Planet London by Lonely Planet

Boris Johnson, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Babbage, congestion charging, Crossrail, death from overwork, discovery of the americas, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Etonian, financial independence, gentrification, haute couture, haute cuisine, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, market design, place-making, post-work, Russell Brand, Skype, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, urban renewal, Winter of Discontent

Standout design highlights include the stunning Aquatics Centre, the Olympic Stadium and the state-of-the-art Velodrome. The entire park will be rebranded the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park upon its reopening after the Games in 2013, in a bid to make the park a top destination for visitors and residents beyond the 2012 Games. Barclay’s Cycle Hire Scheme London’s enthusiastic, tousle-haired mayor Boris Johnson spearheaded this immensely popular bike-hire scheme, with the affectionately named ‘Boris bikes’ dotting the capital since 2010. All you need to hire a bike is your debit or credit card, a reasonably fit pair of legs and lungs, plus a basic sense of direction. There are over 400 well-marked docking stations (Click here) around London and short trips are free!

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Best by Budget £ Honest Burgers (Click here) E Pellici (Click here) Mangal Ocakbasi (Click here) Nevada Street Deli (Click here) Busaba Eathai (Click here) Taquería (Click here) ££ Moro (Click here) Ottolenghi (Click here) Magdalen (Click here) Al Boccon di’Vino (Click here) Kazan (Click here) £££ Les Trois Garçons (Click here) Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s (Click here) Chez Bruce (Click here) Zuma (Click here) Le Boudin Blanc (Click here) Best by Cuisine Modern European Whitechapel Gallery Dining Room (Click here) Vincent Rooms (Click here) Launceston Place (Click here) Andrew Edmunds (Click here) Wild Honey (Click here) Indian Tayyabs (Click here) Café Spice Namasté (Click here) Mooli’s (Click here) Rasoi Vineet Bhatia (Click here) Cinnamon Club (Click here) Chinese Yauatcha (Click here) Bar Shu (Click here) Hunan (Click here) Baozi Inn (Click here) Pearl Liang (Click here) Vegetarian Gate (Click here) Mildreds (Click here) Manna (Click here) Gallery Cafe (Click here) Diwana Bhel Poori House (Click here) Italian Bocca di Lupo (Click here) Fifteen (Click here) Locanda Locatelli (Click here) Polpetto (Click here) British St John (Click here) Penny Black (Click here) Laughing Gravy (Click here) Inn the Park (Click here) Best Gastropubs Gun (Click here) Anchor & Hope (Click here) Garrison Public House (Click here) Duke of Cambridge (Click here) Lots Road Pub & Dining Room (Click here) Best for Views Skylon (Click here) Formans (Click here) Oxo Tower Restaurant & Brasserie (Click here) River Café (Click here) Min Jiang (Click here) Best Afternoon Teas Dean Street Townhouse (Click here) Orangery (Click here) Volupté (Click here) Bea’s of Bloomsbury (Click here) Wolseley (Click here) Best Food Markets Borough Market (Click here) Broadway Market (Click here) Portobello Road Market (Click here) Marylebone Farmers Market (Click here) Best Gourmet Shops Jones Dairy (Click here) Fortnum & Mason (Click here) Algerian Coffee Stores (Click here) Vintage House (Click here) Best Celebrity Chef Restaurants Viajante (Click here) Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (Click here) Nobu (Click here) HIX (Click here) Drinking & Nightlife West London pub TERRY HARRIS / ALAMY © There’s little Londoners like to do more than party. From Hogarth’s 18th-century Gin Lane prints to Mayor Boris Johnson’s decision to ban all alcohol on public transport in 2008, the capital’s history has been shot through with the population’s desire to imbibe as much alcohol as possible and revel like there is no tomorrow. The Pub The pub (public house) is at the heart of London’s existence and is one of the capital’s great social levellers.

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The project ran 24 hours a day, every day for 100 days, and the rules specified that the participants spent their hour on the plinth alone, could do what they wanted as long as it wasn’t illegal and were allowed to take with them anything they could carry. Following Yinka Shonibare’s MBE Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (2011), a wink to the square’s dominant figure, Mayor Boris Johnson announced in early 2011 that artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset would present Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, a boy astride a rocking horse, in 2012 and that Katharina Fritsch would exhibit Hahn/Cock, a huge, bright blue sculpture of a cockerel, in 2013. Each artwork will be exhibited for 18 months.

The Flat White Economy by Douglas McWilliams

access to a mobile phone, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, cloud computing, computer age, correlation coefficient, Crossrail, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, George Gilder, hiring and firing, income inequality, informal economy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, loadsamoney, low skilled workers, mass immigration, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, Peter Thiel, Productivity paradox, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, smart cities, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, vertical integration, working-age population, zero-sum game

Four years later, David Cameron opened the Technology Exhibition CeBIT in Hanover with a follow-up of sorts: “Come over to Shoreditch in East London and you can see it – Tech City is teeming with startups and new ideas. It started less than three-and-a-half years ago with 200 digital companies in that area of East London – now there are 1300”.2 London Mayor Boris Johnson has been even more directly involved. He has announced as his aim the desire to make London the technology capital of the world. Speaking at the launch of London Technology Week in June 2014, he pointed out Tech City’s successes but bemoaned the lack of blockbuster take-offs: “Although we’ve got the biggest tech sector in Europe we haven’t yet produced knock-out multi-billion pound companies.

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Speaking at the launch of London Technology Week in June 2014, he pointed out Tech City’s successes but bemoaned the lack of blockbuster take-offs: “Although we’ve got the biggest tech sector in Europe we haven’t yet produced knock-out multi-billion pound companies. They have in Silicon Valley. We need to explore why that is. Is it a certain British diffidence about making billions? Is it that we haven’t got kick-ass business people here? Or that the banks aren’t as proactive as they should be?” Boris Johnson has a point – the Flat White Economy has produced a lot of startups but they have not yet grown to the scale of global leaders yet. There is no London-based Facebook, Google or Alibaba. This may be partly a matter of time, but it remains a valid criticism. Besides the digital businesses in the area that directly comprise the Flat White Economy, there are related businesses which, in the decentralised world that many technology businesses inhabit, often involve more jobs and activity than the core businesses themselves.

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The pace of housebuilding in London is currently rising at a substantial pace as Figure 9.1 shows – London’s housing orders are running at about six times the historic average. If this continues, London will have had its highest ever pace of housebuilding – with the possible exception of postwar reconstruction. London Mayor Boris Johnson clearly understands the need to encourage housebuilding7 and has been very proactive in trying to ensure that planning permissions for housebuilding developers have been granted. He has been criticised for this (including by me), but in the context of the Flat White Economy one could make the case that if he is erring, at least he is erring on the side of permitting increased economic growth.

The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics by Diarmaid Ferriter

Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, open borders, Ronald Reagan, upwardly mobile

One senior EU delegate maintained that vague talk of waivers for goods and services travelling over the border, or the UK collecting customs duties for the EU, or various untried technological solutions was ‘a lot of magical thinking about how an invisible border would work in the future’.24 May had asserted after the referendum that there would be ‘no return to the borders of the past’. But there was, it seemed, a return to the politics and ignorance of the past over the course of the next two years as a succession of clownish Tories revealed the depth of their ignorance and contempt when it came to Ireland, none more so than Boris Johnson, foreign secretary from July 2016 to July 2018, who embarrassingly suggested the invisible boundary between the London boroughs of Camden and Westminster as a possible model for a post-Brexit border. Johnson continued to dismiss the idea that the Irish border was a complicated issue and communicated his resentment at a private dinner in June 2018: ‘it’s so small and there are so few firms that actually use that border regularly it’s just beyond belief that we’re allowing the tail to wag the dog in this way.

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Why not let’s all put one hand on the red pencil and draw a line that falls naturally and peacefully into place?”’ And so the fate of Puckoon was sealed; now to be divided by the border, with a customs shed on hallowed church ground.29 In the aftermath of the Brexit vote the British government seemed to be taking the Irish border question as seriously as Milligan’s boundary commissioners. Boris Johnson even toasted the British government’s Chequers Agreement in July 2018 – a proposed ‘common rulebook’ with the EU post-Brexit for all goods, including agricultural produce, with Parliament having the option to ‘diverge’ from some rules and with ‘different arrangements for services’ – and then resigned over it.30 After the EU rejected the Chequers proposals in September 2018 Theresa May complained defiantly that she would not contemplate a deal that would ‘divide our country’ by treating Northern Ireland differently and threaten the ‘integrity’ of the UK.

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Arlene Foster later warned ominously of ‘blood red’ lines in relation to a special deal for Northern Ireland, persisting with the bombast that there could not be ‘a differential between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK’ and suggesting the Belfast Agreement could also be altered.32 David Davis and Boris Johnson may have been vocal about the idea that the border issue was being exaggerated, but credible sources suggested otherwise. In 2018, the first officially agreed account since partition in 1920 – between the Republic’s Department of Transport and the Northern Ireland Department for Infrastructure – revealed that Ireland had 208 border crossings and government technicians endured what was described as a ‘nightmare’ trying to map definitively all the roads, paths and dirt tracks that traverse the 500km of frontier, and there was still confusion about where the border juts in and out of routes, ‘or where roads are privately owned on one side and publicly maintained on the other’.

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect by David Goodhart

active measures, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, computer age, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, data science, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deglobalization, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, desegregation, deskilling, different worldview, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Etonian, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Flynn Effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meritocracy, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shock, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, post-industrial society, post-materialism, postindustrial economy, precariat, reshoring, Richard Florida, robotic process automation, scientific management, Scientific racism, Skype, social distancing, social intelligence, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thorstein Veblen, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, young professional

Our enforced confinement in the home caused much family tension, couple separation, and even violence. But it was also a reminder to many people of the primary value of family and the hard work of nurture and education that takes place within its walls. If Britain’s health service is, as the Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, declared, “powered by love” then how much more so the private realm of the family. This is how I see the crisis as strengthening the Hand and Heart and readjusting the status balance somewhat with Head. To put it in political language, I see the crisis, particularly in Europe, as reinforcing an unusual coalition—a conservative preference for the local, the national, the family, along with a liberal preference for higher social spending and modest collectivism, combined too with a renewed concern for the environment.

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An exasperation with the existing political elites was a significant factor behind Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the national elections in France in 2017 and Italy in 2018. In almost all of these cases politicians were rewarded for their lack of political experience and, at least in some of those cases, for their “blokeish” lack of deference toward so-called politically correct speech: Consider the reluctance of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Matteo Salvini to be constrained by the normal rules of official discourse. But, of course, that list also underlines the fact that the idea of politicians being like ordinary people will always be a fantasy. “The uncomfortable truth is that all political systems are aristocracies… Democracies are only different in that the aristocracies are installed and removeable by popular vote,” as the former British judge Jonathan Sumption put it in a 2019 lecture.2 Leading politicians will always be different from the great mass of voters.

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Perhaps this is most true of education policy where we are all too much influenced by our own, dimly remembered, schooldays. Many less educated voters do say they want people more like themselves in politics, although they seem to make an exception for people at the very top like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson who are allowed to be sui generis. According to British political scientist Oliver Heath: “All else being equal, people with a given social characteristic prefer candidates or leaders who share that characteristic: women are more likely than men to vote for female candidates, and black people are more likely than white people to vote for black candidates.”

Lonely Planet London City Guide by Tom Masters, Steve Fallon, Vesna Maric

Boris Johnson, British Empire, centre right, Charles Babbage, Clapham omnibus, congestion charging, Crossrail, dark matter, death from overwork, discovery of the americas, double helix, East Village, Edward Jenner, financial independence, first-past-the-post, Ford Model T, gentrification, ghettoisation, haute cuisine, Isaac Newton, James Bridle, John Snow's cholera map, Mahatma Gandhi, market design, Nelson Mandela, place-making, Russell Brand, South of Market, San Francisco, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, transatlantic slave trade, urban planning, urban renewal, Winter of Discontent, young professional

Madame Tussauds is very keen on public surveys telling it who the punters would like to see most, resulting in such highlights as a photo op with the Kate Moss figure (a poor likeness), an eco Prince Charles statue, the Blush Room where A-listers stand listlessly and where the J-Lo figure blushes if you whisper in her ear. Bollywood fans are treated with a smiling Shahrukh Khan and ‘Big Bruvva’ lovers can get into the Diary Room and take the video home. The latest addition to the collection is of London Mayor Boris Johnson, smiling cheekily at the visitors, and the website features a YouTube video of the live Boris Johnson next to his waxen doppelganger, telling a bunch of journalists that Madame Tussauds is ‘one of those London attractions that will pull this city out of the recession’. All for a good cause, then. Permanent photo opportunities include the political leaders in World Stage and the array of celebrities in Premiere Room.

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Just two weeks later the attempted detonation of several more home-made bombs on London’s public transport system sent the city into a state of severe unease, which culminated in the tragic and shocking shooting by the Metropolitan Police of an innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken for Hussain Osman, one of the failed bombers from the previous day. Summer 2005 definitely marked London’s lowest ebb for some time. Return to beginning of chapter THE ERA OF BORIS Ken Livingstone’s campaign to get a third term as London mayor in 2008 was fatally undermined when the Conservative Party fielded maverick MP and popular TV personality Boris Johnson as its candidate. Even more of a populist than Livingstone, Johnson, portrayed by the media as a gaffe-prone toff, actually proved himself to be a deft political operator. Employing his ‘zone 5 strategy’ (campaigning in suburban London and largely ignoring the inner city where Livingstone’s traditional support lay), amassing a £1.5 million campaign fund and exploiting fears about Livingstone’s rumoured cronyism, Johnson shocked everyone by sailing past the incumbent to become the first Conservative mayor of London.

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While disagreeing with Livingstone on many things, Johnson has actually continued to support several of his predecessor’s policies, including the congestion charge and the expansion of bicycle lanes, albeit with a cut budget for the latter. Johnson, a keen cyclist himself, has pledged to replace Livingstone’s beloved ‘bendy buses’, though this is proving a more problematic campaign promise to keep for financial reasons. * * * THE BORIS PHENOMENON When Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP then best known for a high-profile extramarital affair and regular appearances on the popular news quiz Have I Got News For You, was elected mayor of London in 2008 the country at large was stunned. Johnson became the most senior Tory office holder in the country, and it was at once suggested that he and his old Eton pal David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, would soon find themselves rivals.

The New Snobbery by David Skelton

assortative mating, banking crisis, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, critical race theory, David Brooks, defund the police, deindustrialization, Etonian, Extinction Rebellion, financial deregulation, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, meritocracy, microaggression, new economy, Northern Rock, open borders, postindustrial economy, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, rising living standards, shareholder value, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, TED Talk, TikTok, wealth creators, women in the workforce

“David Skelton was talking about levelling up and the potential for a Conservative breakthrough with the abandoned working class long before either was a glint in Boris Johnson’s eye. In this timely, insightful and impassioned book, he explains how a new snobbery is alienating the progressive left from the working people of Britain. If you want to know why the Red Wall is turning Tory, and how the post-Brexit political realignment might become permanent, read this book. I suspect Boris Johnson will have half a dozen copies on his bedside table before too long.” Tim Shipman, political editor, Sunday Times “David Skelton is, once again, excellent.

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Post-2005 ‘Tory modernisation’ was squarely aimed at the metropolitan middle class, with a short-lived cocktail of Thatcherite economics and social liberalism that didn’t seem especially conservative. This all began to change rapidly with the Brexit vote. The shift of the Labour Party to being the party of middle-class political hobbyists made the swing possible, but the Tory Party also had to change to make it happen. The move that started under Theresa May and then crystallised under Boris Johnson saw a shift away from myopic economic liberalism and accepted that the state had a role to play in the economy. This was reflected in a policy agenda that focused on using the state to ‘level up’ and the use of levers such as state aid. This didn’t go unnoticed and led to many towns that have been Labour for the best part of a century voting Tory – something that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle by Jamie Woodcock

4chan, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, anti-work, antiwork, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Boris Johnson, Build a better mousetrap, butterfly effect, call centre, capitalist realism, collective bargaining, Columbine, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, emotional labour, game design, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, Hacker Ethic, Howard Zinn, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, Jeremy Corbyn, John Conway, Kickstarter, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Oculus Rift, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, scientific management, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, tech worker, union organizing, unpaid internship, V2 rocket, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War

Siwek, “Video Games in the 21st Century,” Entertainment Software Association, 2017. 9Ukie, “The Games Industry in Numbers,” Ukie, http://ukie.org.uk/research. 10Ukie, “The Games Industry in Numbers.” 11Ukie, “The Games Industry in Numbers.” 12Boris Johnson, “The Writing Is on the Wall – Computer Games Rot the Brain,” Telegraph, December 28, 2006, www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3635699/The-writing-is-on-the-wall-computer-games-rot-the-brain.html. 13Tom Phillips, “Disgraced Senator Who Campaigned against Violent Video Games Jailed,” Eurogamer, February 25, 2016, www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-25-disgraced-senator-who-campaigned-against-violent-video-games-jailed. 14Quoted in Julian Benson, “10 Years Ago, Boris Johnson Held Games Responsible for ‘Ignorance, Underachievement and Poverty,’” Kotaku, January 19, 2016, www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/01/19/10-years-ago-boris-johnson-said-that-games-were-responsible-for-ignorance-underachievement-and-poverty. 15Olsberg-SPI and Nordicity, “Economic Contribution of the UK’s Film, High-End TV, Video Game, and Animation Programming Sectors,” February 2015, www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/film-industry-statistics-reports/reports/uk-film-economy/economic-contribution-uks-film-sectors. 16The Video Games Tax Relief program “allows video games studios to claim a cash repayment or tax relief from the Government after they have spent money on developing a video game.”

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Contrast this figure with the video market, £2.3 billion (of which the videogames market is 1.65 times larger); and music, £1.3 billion (videogames: 2.9 times larger).11 Videogames therefore make up the majority (51.3 percent) of entertainment spending in the UK. This potential—and it is worth stressing that often these statistics are exaggerated—has captured the imagination of many actors, from investors to governments. For example, the British politician Boris Johnson used to write scathingly critical takes on videogames. A prominent member of the right-wing Conservative Party in the UK, he is famous for his carefully curated image as a bumbling aristocrat. In an article for the right-wing British newspaper the Telegraph, Johnson once wrote the following about children who play videogames: They become like blinking lizards, motionless, absorbed, only the twitching of their hands showing they are still conscious.

Re-Educated: Why It’s Never Too Late to Change Your Life by Lucy Kellaway

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, lockdown, Martin Wolf, stakhanovite, wage slave

The red scrapbook is full of technical news stories from the early days, including an impressively niche one on agricultural equipment manufacturers, in which I painstakingly explain the superiority of the square baler over the round one. There are many more from my stint in Brussels where I was posted in 1990 to cover the impending single market. I wrote faithful stories about new European legislation in semiconductors and sausage meat, leaving my counterpart on the Telegraph, Boris Johnson, to whip up his own faithless scoops: Brussels bans the British banger. I am proud of my reporting as I worked so hard trying to understand the legal detail – so much so that I felt personal outrage over Brexit (on top of all the other outrage) as it meant all that effort had been a total waste of time.

…

But once lockdown hit, over 150 people were regularly tuning into our Zoom events to listen to me holding forth from my study at home about how much I loved my new career. Only I didn’t love it then. I absolutely loathed teaching during lockdown. From the terrible day when we gathered around a computer screen in the maths office at school and watched Boris Johnson announce that schools were closing and that exams were cancelled, my job became hateful to me. I disliked recording lessons and posting them on Google Classroom, knowing that half the students – those very same ones who were already doing badly – would not be listening to them. I hated not being able to see my students.

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I don’t ask which one but fear the worst – that an article I wrote about dating is doing the rounds. Me: Quite possible. I used to be a journalist. Are you interested in journalism? Student: Nah. He wanders off to giggle with his friends. A Year 8 boy who took part in a debate I arranged comes up to discuss the election. He wants to be a politician. Me: Do you like Boris Johnson? Student: No. He’s a liar. But I still think this country needs someone like him. Over his shoulder I see a large group of students congregating. The school only allows up to eight students to talk together, but this is a cluster of ten smallish boys. I tell them two of them must leave the group, and stand there looking fierce until, reluctantly, a pair peels away. 1.05pm For the second half of duty I’m stationed in the canteen queue.

Corbyn by Richard Seymour

anti-communist, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, centre right, collective bargaining, credit crunch, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, first-past-the-post, full employment, gender pay gap, gentrification, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, land value tax, liberal world order, mass immigration, means of production, moral panic, Naomi Klein, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, pension reform, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, precariat, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent control, Snapchat, stakhanovite, systematic bias, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, Wolfgang Streeck, working-age population, éminence grise

If their campaign wasn’t to be a leftier version of the largely defensive, apolitical Remain campaign, it needed to outline a strategy for an offensive. Another Europe was possible – but how? John McDonnell was intellectually the sharpest defender of this case. He used a rally to condemn both the paranoid bombast of Boris Johnson, comparing the EU to the Third Reich, and Cameron’s ‘Project Fear’ approach to Remain. The debate, he said, was a perpetuation of the ‘gang warfare of the Eton playing fields’, dragging the country ‘into the intellectual gutter’. He stressed that many of the issues facing the future were transnational and required transnational solutions: climate change, financial malfeasance and tax avoidance, refugees.

…

The critique of the EU as an undemocratic bloc committed to neoliberal practices was well founded, but there was, in truth, little strategic calculation about what Brexit would mean in practice, or how it was to be harnessed by the Left. The bigger problem, however, was that the Left was barely a factor. The media weren’t interested in what it was saying. Corbyn arguably only got the coverage he did, which was limited, because he was Labour leader. The top six figures reported in the news were David Cameron, Boris Johnson, George Osborne, Nigel Farage, Michael Gove and Ian Duncan Smith. Of these, four were Brexit campaigners. Taking the entire media into account, and factoring for viewership and readership, the Brexit campaign received 80 per cent of the coverage. Corbyn’s campaign focused on trying to outflank the media by building grassroots support, while Labour In for Britain muddled along in obscurity – in a BBC article on the campaign, it was mentioned as an afterthought.

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By insinuation, if you haven’t shown a consistent bias toward the British state, the Union, and the Loyalist paramilitaries defending it, you’re as good as one of them. That, naturally, segued neatly into the Conservative campaign claiming that Corbyn had, in the words of Security Minister Ben Wallace, ‘spent a lifetime siding with Britain’s enemies’. Or, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson put it, that Corbyn had ‘taken the side of just about every adversary this country has had in my lifetime’. The Tories went further in their attack ads, editing pieces of Corbyn’s speeches to make it appear as if he refused to condemn IRA violence at all.48 The chorus was in synch, the choreography perfectly timed.

Revolting!: How the Establishment Are Undermining Democracy and What They're Afraid Of by Mick Hume

anti-communist, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, central bank independence, colonial rule, David Brooks, disinformation, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Jeremy Corbyn, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, open borders, plutocrats, post-truth, public intellectual, Slavoj Žižek, the scientific method, We are the 99%, World Values Survey

The last time any major UK political party pledged to leave the EU at a general election was back in 1983, when it formed part of the Labour Party’s left-wing manifesto – described as ‘the longest suicide note in history’ – which resulted in a devastating defeat. In the June 2016 referendum campaign, the leaders of every mainstream party – including Labour’s Corbyn, supposedly a long-standing left-wing Eurosceptic – backed the conformist Remain campaign. Even leading Tory Leave campaigner Boris Johnson had no history of being anti-EU, and had gone so far as to write an (unpublished) pro-Remain column months before the referendum. The popular Brexit vote looked far more like a spirited revolt against discredited and two-faced politicians than any tame acquiescence to their instructions. In response, those politicians reacted as if they had been shot at.

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37 What’s the truth about those ‘Brexit lies’? There were of course exaggerated claims and flights of fancy on both sides of the EU referendum: from the official Leave campaign’s fantasy of a quick extra £350 million a week for the NHS, to the Remain campaign’s horror stories of imminent economic depression; from Boris Johnson’s comparison of the EU with Hitler, to David Cameron’s warning that a vote for Brexit would delight ISIS and could start the Third World War. Much of this is the overblown-but-normal cut-and-thrust of heated political debate in an electoral firefight. Voters do not need to be protected from such stuff by the wise men and women of the European Commission, the ERS or any other fact-checkers or ‘official body’ set up to decide The Truth on our behalf.

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It is certainly preferable to leaving our liberties to the tender mercies of the state authorities backed by illiberal liberals who appear to believe that most voters are a racist lynch-mob, and that jurors are the rapist’s friends. 2 ‘People are too ignorant to know what’s right – leave it to the experts’ What proved to be the most controversial statement during the EU referendum campaign in the UK? Not Boris Johnson’s typically overblown comparison of the EU’s expansionist aims with Hitler’s Germany. Nor prime minister David Cameron’s desperate claim that leaving the European Union could mean signing up for the Third World War. No, the statement that appeared to cause most outrage in political and media circles was Leave campaigner and then-Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove’s suggestion to a television interviewer that ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of experts’.

The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It by Stuart Maconie

"there is no alternative" (TINA), banking crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, Desert Island Discs, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, Etonian, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, gentrification, Golden age of television, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, North Sea oil, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, post-truth, post-war consensus, rent control, retail therapy, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, Stephen Fry, surveillance capitalism, The Chicago School, universal basic income, Winter of Discontent

He is one of the few heroes Ken Loach and Alastair Campbell probably have in common. I confess that I can be a sucker for a spot of Nyemania myself. I’m not wild about fannish cults surrounding politicians. I’d rather have the hard-working, principled, slightly dull Clem Attlee over sordid ‘characters’ like Boris Johnson any day. But if we’re going to have cults, let’s reserve them for people like Nye. When I have winced behind splayed fingers as Jeremy Corbyn has scuttled in disdain and fear from journalists’ perfectly reasonable questions, flanked by minders who bleat about him being ‘hassled’, I wonder what Nye would have done.

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But another seminal landmark of the NHS is still very much standing, booming in fact, even in the face of adversity and austerity. Worth seeing, I thought. Well worth the tram to Trafford Bar and the 256 bus to Collyhurst, a working-class suburb of Manchester with a claim to be the historic heart of the National Health Service. We shouldn’t let the memory of an inflated self-publicist like Boris Johnson dangling marooned on a zip wire high in the air, waving a little flag like Captain Mainwaring’s halfwit brother, suggest that all instances of political theatre are foolish and wrong. Nye Bevan could surely have made even that daft stunt work, just as he made the opening day of the NHS a stirring national spectacle with himself, of course, at the heart.

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Many economists, most of those in universities and academia as opposed to the more partial and vested City economists, have pointed out that the cuts could easily have been postponed until the countries wider economic fortunes had changed and the threat of recession receded. But more to the point, when Christopher Grayling can squander billions on botched privatisations and Boris Johnson waste the same on harebrained garden bridge schemes, we have to ask what kind of society we want before we decide where to cut. For me, libraries, like schools and hospitals should be the last things we should cut not the first, alongside parks and leisure centres, swimming baths and sports pitches, the great panoply of healthy – and sometimes not so healthy – organised fun that was another reason some of us grew up grateful for the nanny state.

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, cashless society, clean water, cryptocurrency, Deng Xiaoping, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, global supply chain, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, land reform, Londongrad, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Meghnad Desai, Nelson Mandela, Paris climate accords, purchasing power parity, ransomware, Rubik’s Cube, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, trade route, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, urban planning, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Most people in Britain were ‘suffering because of our membership of the EU’, Michael Gove, then secretary of state for justice, stated baldly in a televised interview shortly before the referendum, offering no evidence to support his claim.19 The European Union, he had said previously, had ‘proved a failure on so many fronts’ – and was not only holding Britain back, but doing so to all its members. By leaving, he claimed, ‘we can show the rest of Europe the way to flourish’.20 In the build-up to the referendum, the European Union was presented as being part of the problem, not part of the solution for Britain’s future. The EU, said Boris Johnson, was ‘a job-destroyer engine’, that did deep damage to the British economy.21 The customs union between all the members of the EU was a ‘complete sell-out of Britain’s national interests’, said another prominent proponent of Brexit; ‘luckily’, however, noted yet another senior politician, Britain has ‘old friendships’ with other countries that could be rekindled and with whom better trade agreements could be reached – countries, as it so happened, that had almost all once been British colonies.22 To advance into the future meant looking to the past

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, Financial Times, 23 March 2018. 16http://www.europarl.europa.eu/resources/library/media/20180411RES01553/20180411RES01553.pdf 17Reuters, ‘EU is not at war with Poland, says EU’s Juncker’, 17 January 2018. 18Agence France-Presse, ‘Italy threatens EU funding in migrant row’, 25 August 2018. 19Anushka Asthana and Rowena Mason, ‘Michael Gove attacks David Cameron over EU “scaremongering” ’, Guardian, 4 June 2016. 20BBC News, ‘UK “better off” out of EU – Michael Gove’, 20 February 2016. 21The Herald, ‘Boris Johnson: EU tariffs would be “insane” if UK backs Brexit’, 21 June 2016. 22BBC News, ‘Liam Fox warning of customs union “sellout”, 27 February 2018; Chloe Farand, ‘UK government post-Brexit plans to create Africa free-trade zone are being internally branded “Empire 2.0” ’, Independent, 6 March 2017. 23UK Prime Minister’s Office, press release, ‘PM; UK should become the global leader in free trade’, 4 September 2016. 24Association of Southeast Asian Nations, http://asean.org/?

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, The Diplomat, 12 July 2017. 116Laura He, ‘HNA sells property and logistics assets to Chinese tycoon Sun Hongbin for US$305 million’, 12 March 2018; Don Weiland, ‘Default reignites questions over China groups’ state backing’, 7 June 2018; Elvira Pollina, ‘Elliott launches action to take control of AC Milan – source’, Reuters, 9 July 2018. 117Zhou Xiaochuan, ‘守住不发生系统性金融风险的底线’, http://www.pbc.gov.cn/goutongjiaoliu/113456/113469/3410388/index.html 118Stefania Palma, ‘Malaysia suspends $22bn China-backed projects’, Financial Times, 5 July 2018; Kuunghee Park, ‘Malaysia finally scraps $ 3billion China-backed pipeline plans’, Bloomberg, 10 September 2018. 119Jeremy Page and Saeed Shah, ‘China’s Global Building Spree Runs Into Trouble in Pakistan’, 22 July 2018. 120Jamil Anderlini, Henny Sender and Farhan Bokhari, ‘Pakistan rethinks its role in Xi’s Belt and Road plan’, Financial Times, 9 September 2018. 121Stephen Dziedzic, ‘Tonga urges Pacific nations to press China to forgive debts as Beijing defends its approach’, ABC, 16 August 2018. 122Jon Emont and Myo Myo, ‘Chinese-funded port gives Myanmar a sinking feeling’, Wall Street Journal, 15 August 2018. 123James Kynge, ‘China’s Belt and Road difficulties are proliferating across the world’, Financial Times, 9 July 2018. 124Sarah Zheng, ‘China embarks on belt and road publicity blitz after Malaysia says no to debt-heavy infrastructure projects’, South China Morning Post, 26 August 2018. 125Xinhua, ‘Xi pledges to bring benefits to people through Belt and Road Initiative’, 27 August 2018. 126Xinhua, ‘Full text of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at opening ceremony of 2018 FOCAC Beijing summit’, 4 September 2018. 127Yonas Abiye, ‘Chinese government to restructure Ethiopia’s debt’, The Reporter, 8 September 2018. 128Christian Shepherd, Ben Blanchard, ‘China’s Xi offers another $60bn to Africa, but says no to “vanity” projects’, Reuters, 3 September 2018. 129Bank of England, ‘From the Middle Kingdom to the United Kingdom: spillovers from China’, Quarterly Bulletin Q2 (2018), op. cit. 130David Lawder and Elias Glenn, ‘Trump says US tariffs could be applied to Chinese goods worth $500 billion’, Reuters, 5 July 2018. 131Bank of England, ‘From the Middle Kingdom to the United Kingdom.’ op. cit. 132BBC News, ‘Boris Johnson’s resignation letter and May’s reply in full’, 9 July 2018. 133Tasnim News Agency, ‘Iran, Kazakhstan plan trade in own currencies’, 12 August 2018. 134Heiko Maas, ‘Wir lassen nicht zu, dass die USA über unsere Köpfe hinweg handeln’, Handelsblatt, 21 August 2018. 135Christina Larsen, ‘China’s massive investment in artificial intelligence has an insidious downside’, Science, 8 February 2018. 136Xinhua, ‘Beijing to build technology park for developing artificial intelligence’, 3 January 2018; The Economist, ‘China talks of building a “digital silk road”’, 31 May 2018. 137CB Insights, Top AI Trends To Watch in 2018 (2018). 138Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, ‘Xi Jinping Urges Breaking New Ground in Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics’, 23 June 2018. 139Stephen Chen, ‘Artificial Intelligene, immune to fear or favour, is helping to make China’s foreign policy’, South China Morning Post, 30 July 2018. 140Jamie Fullerton, ‘China’s new CH-5 Rainbow drone leaves US Reaper “in the dust”’, The Times 18 July 2017. 141Jeremy Page and Paul Sonne, ‘Unable to Buy US Military Drones, Allies Place Orders With China’, Wall Street Journal, 17 July 2017. 142Bill Gertz, ‘China in race to overtake the US in AI warfare’, Asia Times, 30 May 2018. 143George Allison, ‘The speech delivered by the Chief of the Defence Staff at the Air Power Conference’, UK Defence Journal, 13 July 2018. 144Stephen Chen, ‘New Chinese military drone for overseas buyers “to rival” US’s MQ-9 Reaper’, South China Morning Post, 17 July 2017. 145Boris Egorov, ‘Rise of the Machines: A look at Russia’s latest combat robots’, 8 June 2017. 146Robert Mendick, Ben Farmer and Roland Oliphant, ‘UK military intelligence issues warning over Russian supertank threat’, Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2016. 147Anastasia Sviridova, ‘Специалисты обсудили успехи и недостатки в сегменте отечественной робототехники’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 4 June 2018. 148Dave Majumdar, ‘The Air Force’s Worst Nightmare: Russia and China Could Kill Stealth Fighters’, The National Interest, 28 June 2018. 149Zachary Keck, ‘China’s DF-26 “Carrier-Killer” Missile Could Stop the Navy in Its Track (without Firing a Shot)’, The National Interest, 20 April 2018. 150Aanchal Bansal, ‘India’s first manned space mission to send three persons’, Economic Times, 29 August 2018. 151Stephen Clark, ‘China sets new national record for most launches in a year’, Spaceflight Now, 27 August 2018; Ernesto Londoño, ‘China on the march in Latin America with new space station in Argentina’, Financial Review, 2 August 2018. 152White House, ‘Remarks by President Trump at a Meeting with the National Space Council and Signing of Space Policy Directive-3’, 18 June 2018. 153Shawn Donnan, ‘US strikes deal with ZTE to lift ban’, 7 June 2018. 154Charles Clover, ‘China-Russia rocket talks sparks US disquiet over growing links’, Financial Times, 17 January 2018. 155Patti Domm, ‘US could target 10 Chinese industries, including new energy vehicles, biopharma’, CNBC, 22 March 2018. 156John Grady, ‘Pentagon Research Chief Nominee: China, Russia Racing to Develop Next Generation Weapon Technology’, United States Naval Institute, 11 May 2018. 157Shane Harris, ‘The CIA is returning its central focus to nation-state rivals, director says’, Washington Post, 24 September 2018. 158China–Russia Relations, p.5. 159Bandurski, ‘Yan Xuetong on the Bipolar state of our world, op.cit.’ 160Edward Luce, ‘Henry Kissinger: “We are in a very, very grave period” ’, 20 July 2018. 161Xinhua, ‘Reform, opening up break new ground for China: article’, 13 August 2018. 162Clare Foges, ‘Our timid leaders can learn from strongmen’, The Times, 23 July 2018. 163State Council Information Office, ‘Full text: Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the World Economic Forum’, 6 April 2017. 164Reuters, ‘Trump says tariffs could be applied to Chinese goods’, 5 July 2018. 165Frankopan, Silk Roads, xv. 166Minnie Chan, ‘China’s army infiltrated by “peace disease” after years without a war, says its official newspaper’, South China Morning Post, 3 July 2018. 167US Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018, op. cit. 168Jessica Donati.

Half In, Half Out: Prime Ministers on Europe by Andrew Adonis

banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, colonial rule, congestion charging, Corn Laws, cuban missile crisis, Dominic Cummings, eurozone crisis, imperial preference, mass immigration, Neil Kinnock, oil shock, Suez crisis 1956

Get rid of the EU and watch British productivity soar. De facto and de jure sovereignty – reality and delusion. Remember Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I: Glendower: ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’ Hotspur: ‘Why so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? Well, the spirits are summoned. Boris Johnson and the tabloid editors are on the case. And, forget not, if they don’t arrive on time by March 2019 we will be to blame. Which brings me to my final point. An important chorus in the drama of John’s negotiations with Brussels and with the Conservative Party was the media, more specifically the British media, parts of which have been the catalysts in moulding opinion on Europe over the years, and whose role will be even more significant and divisive I fear over the coming months and years.

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Noting that Samantha Cameron was with her husband, May turned to the only other person in the room at the time, her then media adviser at the Home Office, Joey Jones, and declared: ‘He’s going to go.’ She did not know until then that there would be a leadership contest in the immediate aftermath of a Brexit referendum. Even then she worked on the assumption, as many did in her party and beyond, that Boris Johnson would probably be the next Prime Minister. Only when Johnson withdrew from the contest did May realise she stood a very good chance. Suddenly she was Prime Minister when the only other candidate left standing, Andrea Leadsom, pulled out. With dizzying speed, the UK had a new leader who had never been given cause to think deeply about Brexit.

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This needless defensiveness was combined with an overconfident ideological zeal slightly at odds with her personality. Her ministerial team was equally ill prepared. Her Brexit Secretary, David Davis, had never been a Cabinet minister. He had been a highly effective Europe minister in the 1990s but the EU had changed beyond recognition since then. Boris Johnson had also never been a Cabinet minister before moving to one of the top jobs in government at the Foreign Office. Liam Fox had been forced to resign as Defence Secretary under David Cameron and now became the key figure seeking future trade deals. To some extent, all of them mistakenly regarded the early stages of the negotiation as a game of poker.

My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle

airport security, banking crisis, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Brixton riot, credit crunch, dark matter, David Attenborough, Jon Ronson, Live Aid, out of africa, pez dispenser, Russell Brand, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, traveling salesman, urban planning

I hated the intensity of life in London—walking around a Scottish city is like walking around London after an apocalyptic viral event. I knew that I really needed to get out when Boris Johnson got elected. Voting for Boris Johnson can’t have been that different from voting for a Labrador wearing a Wonder Woman costume. He’s sort of like a wee boy who’s woken up in his dad’s body. The Labour Party must really be in trouble if they can lose control of London to a fat albino with Down’s syndrome. Earlier this year Madame Tussauds unveiled a waxwork of Boris Johnson. It’s so lifelike the only way to tell them apart is that the waxwork is slightly better at running London.

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Boris Johnson, Burning Man, call centre, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collaborative consumption, data science, Didi Chuxing, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, East Village, fake it until you make it, fixed income, gentrification, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, housing crisis, inflight wifi, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Justin.tv, Kickstarter, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Necker cube, obamacare, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, power law, race to the bottom, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ruby on Rails, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, SoftBank, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech bro, TechCrunch disrupt, Tony Hsieh, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, Y Combinator, Y2K, Zipcar

James Titcomb, “What Is Uber and Why Does TFL Want to Crack Down on It?,” Telegraph, September 30, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/uber/11902093/What-is-Uber-and-why-does-TfL-want-to-crack-down-on-it.html. 3. Oscar Williams-Grut, “Taxi Drivers Caused Chaos at London’s City Hall after Boris Johnson Called Them ‘Luddites,’” Business Insider, September 16, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/london-mayor-boris-johnsons-question-time-disrupted-by-uber-protest-2015-9. 4. James Titcomb, “Uber Wins Victory in London as TFL Drops Proposals to Crack Down on App,” Telegraph, January 20, 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/uber/12109810/Uber-wins-victory-in-London-as-TfL-drops-proposals-to-crack-down-on-app.html. 5.

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It proposed rules that, among other restrictions, would prohibit Uber from showing available cars in its app and require drivers to wait a minimum of five minutes before picking up passengers who had solicited a ride.2 These were irrational measures, mostly meant to curtail Uber’s appeal. Emotions were running high. “That Travis, he’s so smarmy, I could just punch him,” Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Driver Association, a black-cab trade group, told me on my visit. At the eye of the storm was London’s mop-topped Conservative mayor, Boris Johnson, who would later rise to international attention as a main backer of Brexit, Great Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Johnson was in a tough spot. He had solicited the support of black-cab drivers during his mayoral run in 2008, even printing his campaign slogan on taxi receipts. At first Johnson noted that Uber was systematically breaking minicab regulations by allowing its drivers to cruise the streets and wait for passengers.

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The company mobilized not only an army of practiced lobbyists but two hundred thousand customers who put their signatures on a petition calling for the TfL to drop its proposed restrictions. In January 2016, it did. Johnson conceded that the regulations “did not find widespread support” and said that lawmakers could not “disinvent the internet.”4 Boris Johnson’s counterparts in continental Europe did not necessarily agree with him. In France, the institutional reflex against Uber was strong. In early 2014, with Uber growing in Paris—the city had become the startup’s sixth market more than two years before—the French legislature ruled that drivers had to wait fifteen minutes before picking up a passenger that hailed a car on the Uber app.

Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison by The Class Ceiling Why it Pays to be Privileged (2019, Policy Press)

affirmative action, Ascot racecourse, Boris Johnson, Bullingdon Club, classic study, critical race theory, discrete time, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Hyperloop, if you build it, they will come, imposter syndrome, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, Martin Parr, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microaggression, nudge theory, nudge unit, old-boy network, performance metric, psychological pricing, school choice, Skype, starchitect, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, work culture

Jensen, T. (2014) ‘Welfare commonsense, Poverty porn and doxosophy’, Sociological Research Online, 19(3), 3. Jerolmack, C. and Khan, S. (2014) ‘Talk is cheap: Ethnography and the attitudinal fallacy’, Sociological Methods & Research, 43(2), 178-209 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124114523396). Johnson, B. (2013) ‘Boris Johnson’s speech at the Margaret Thatcher lecture in full’, The Telegraph, 28 November (www. telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/london-mayor-election/ mayor-of-london/10480321/Boris-Johnsons-speech-at-theMargaret-Thatcher-lecture-in-full.html). 341 The Class Ceiling Jones, D. (1924) An English pronouncing dictionary: (Showing the pronunciation of over 50,000 words in international phonetic transcription) (Rev. edn, with Supplement), New York: E.

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Young is not necessarily alone in this view.2 The US political scientist Charles Murray has long made similar arguments about the association between IQ and race,3 and more recently authored Coming apart, which blames the travails of the white working class in the US on their purported lower cognitive abilities. Back in the UK, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has also drawn on these arguments, arguing that economic inequality is the ‘inevitable’ by-product of ‘human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth’.4 These views may seem a little extreme. Certainly, empirical research connecting social mobility, intelligence and genetics is highly disputed.5 But we start this chapter with such provocations to make a broader point.

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Figure 3.1: The class pay gap is even larger after accounting for demographics £-£1,000 -£2,000 -£3,000 -£4,000 -£5,000 -£6,000 -£7,000 -£8,000 -£9,000 No controls Demographic controls Intermediate origins Working-class origins Note: Predicted class pay gaps between upwardly mobile and professional-managerial-origin people, with no controls, and in a regression model with controls for demographics – racial-ethnic group, country of birth, age, gender and disability status. Both class-origin pay gaps are statistically significant at p<0.05. Source: LFS 60 Untangling the class pay gap Is education really the ‘great equaliser’? Demographic differences, then, definitively do not explain the class pay gap. But what about differences in ‘merit’ or what Boris Johnson might call ‘raw ability’? For many, particularly on the right and centre of British politics, this is the go-to mechanism when confronted with this type of inequality. Those campaigning to end the gender pay gap, for example, have spent decades working to dispel myths that women perform less well, are less ambitious, or less well-qualified.12 Tellingly, most people in positions of power who we interviewed for this book also instinctively reached for meritocratic explanations when asked about the class pay gap.

SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

agricultural Revolution, airport security, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Boris Johnson, call centre, clean water, cognitive bias, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths, disintermediation, endowment effect, experimental economics, food miles, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Nash: game theory, Joseph Schumpeter, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, market design, microcredit, Milgram experiment, Neal Stephenson, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, patent troll, power law, presumed consent, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, selection bias, South China Sea, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, urban planning, William Langewiesche, women in the workforce, young professional

Could it be that nuclear energy, risks and all, is now seen as preferable to the uncertainties of global warming?” / 170 Al Gore’s “We” campaign: see www. climateprotect.org and Andrew C. Revkin, “Gore Group Plans Ad Blitz on Global Warming,” The New York Times, April 1, 2008. / 170 The heretic Boris Johnson: see Boris Johnson, “We’ve Lost Our Fear of Hellfire, but Put Climate Change in Its Place,” The Telegraph, February 2, 2006. / 170 “Rendered nearly lifeless”: see Peter Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Princeton University Press, 2009); and Drake Bennett, “Dark Green: A Scientist Argues That the Natural World Isn’t Benevolent and Sustaining: It’s Bent on Self-Destruction,” The Boston Globe, January 11, 2009. / 170–171 Human activity and carbon emissions: see Kenneth Chang, “Satellite Will Track Carbon Dioxide,” The New York Times, February 22, 2009; read more about NASA’s view of carbon dioxide at http:/oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science/.

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He has since founded the Alliance for Climate Protection, which describes itself as “an unprecedented mass persuasion exercise.” Its centerpiece is a $300 million public-service campaign called “We,” which urges Americans to change their profligate ways. Any religion, meanwhile, has its heretics, and global warming is no exception. Boris Johnson, a classically educated journalist who managed to become mayor of London, has read Lovelock—he calls him a “sacerdotal figure”—and concluded the following: “Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods.

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atul Gawande, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, death of newspapers, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job satisfaction, lockdown, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, meta-analysis, New Journalism, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school choice, security theater, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, trade route, Upton Sinclair, zoonotic diseases

., “California Lessons from the 1918 Pandemic: San Francisco Dithered; Los Angeles Acted and Saved Lives,” Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2020. 23 P. Gahr et al., “An Outbreak of Measles in an Under-Vaccinated Community,” Pediatrics 2014; 134: e220–228. 24 H. Stewart et al., “Boris Johnson Orders UK Lockdown to Be Enforced by Police,” The Guardian, March 23, 2020. 25 Y. Talmazan, “U.K.’s Boris Johnson Says Doctors Prepared to Announce His Death as He Fought COVID-19,” NBC News, May 3, 2020. 26 T. Mulvihill, “Sweden’s Divisive Lockdown Policy Could See It Excluded from Nordic ‘Travel Bubble,’” The Telegraph, May 27, 2020. 27 J. Henley, “We Should Have Done More, Admits Architect of Sweden’s Covid-19 Strategy,” The Guardian, June 3, 2020. 28 D.

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This line of reasoning feels sound in some ways; we cannot really stop the germ from infecting many people unless we have a vaccine, and efforts to stop it require us to devastate our economy and might possibly create many more deaths because of our response. After all, poverty is deadly too. Some countries did consider this approach in 2020. The British toyed with, but ultimately rejected, the idea of “taking it on the chin.” Sobering estimates of a rapid increase in deaths prompted a belated national lockdown in the UK.24 Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself contracted the disease after affecting an air of nonchalance for months, and he ended up in intensive care for several days in April 2020.25 Sweden, alone among its Scandinavian neighbors, adopted a tactic like this, aiming to isolate the vulnerable and aged while allowing the young and healthy to go about their business as sensibly as possible in order to achieve sufficient levels of population immunity.

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We learned that in India, for unclear reasons, younger people died of SARS-2 in higher proportions than in other countries.4 That country was being hit so hard that it resorted to using railway cars to create eight thousand more beds for COVID-19 patients in the capital.5 At the same time, the virus reemerged in China and in other populous countries, such as South Korea, that had previously successfully controlled it. In Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, was so dismissive of what he called a “little flu” that a federal judge had to order him to wear a mask, the virus ran loose. In fact, like Boris Johnson in England before him, Bolsonaro became infected himself.6 Very preliminary hints also emerged from genetics laboratories around the world that the virus might possibly have certain variants that were worse for humans—more deadly or more infectious or both.7 And, with the passage of time, information began to accumulate about the long-term morbidity associated with the virus; some patients would be debilitated for months after recovery.8 In other words, for all we have learned about the virus through the early stages of the pandemic, there is still colossal uncertainty about exactly how it will continue to change the shape of our society in the coming years.

Greater: Britain After the Storm by Penny Mordaunt, Chris Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, accelerated depreciation, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, failed state, fake news, Firefox, fixed income, full employment, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, impact investing, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lateral thinking, Live Aid, lockdown, loss aversion, low skilled workers, microaggression, mittelstand, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Ocado, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, quantitative easing, remote working, road to serfdom, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, transaction costs, transcontinental railway

With an eighty-seven majority, it has more power to legislate than any other government in the past thirty years. The pandemic has obscured this truth. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this and the scale of the massive shift. This matters because without a majority, governments can barely deal with day-to-day events. They can’t do anything. This is where it had got to when Boris Johnson was elected leader of the Conservatives. In fact, it was worse than that. It was what is technically called a significant minority position. With a small majority (up to fifty seats), governments can pass budgets and set about running the country. In a house of 650 MPs, though, if one in thirteen, or 7 per cent, of your MPs rebel, then you’ve lost your small majority.

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utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic 7 https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/foi-and-eir/commons-foi-disclosures/human-resources/staff---numbers-2017/ 8 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31049249 9 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31049249 10 https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/parliamentary-monitor-2018/time 11 https://webrootsdemocracy.org/2018/01/19/mps-clamour-for-electronic-voting/ 12 HoC library. 13 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/06/who-needs-house-of-lords-meet-peers-rattling-the-commons 14 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/07/nadine-dorries-david-cameron-quip 15 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-parliaments-42908222 16 https://www.visitbritain.org/annual-survey-visits-visitor-attractions-latest-results 17 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/08/uk-more-willing-embrace-authoritarianism-warn-hansard-audit-political-engagement 18 https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/parliamentary-monitor-2020/cost-administration 19 https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/parliamentary-monitor-2020/cost-administration 20 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/house-of-lords-expenses-spiral-out-of-control-36w0cbq5s 21 https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1323184/house-of-lords-peers-expenses-cost-voting-debates-electoral-reform-society 22 https://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-lords-faqs/lords-members/ 23 https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/publications/house-of-lords-fact-vs-fiction/#sub-section-3 24 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2375700/MP-Mark-Pritchard-My-marriage-latest-list-20-Tories-split-spouses.html 25 https://labourlist.org/2014/07/labour-need-more-signposts-not-weathervanes/ 26 https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-trends-the-age-of-mps/ 27 https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7483/CBP-7483.pdf 28 https://www.statista.com/statistics/275394/median-age-of-the-population-in-the-united-kingdom/ 29 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/allemployeesashetable1 30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_Members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament 31 https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/transparency-publications/hoc-transparency-publications/former-mp-passes/ 32 http://www.w4mp.org/library/researchguides/welcome/access-to-refreshment-facilities-in-the-palace-of-westminster/ 33 https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/parliament-and-elections/representatives-of-society/ 34 https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/jun/04/higher-education-participation-data-analysis 35 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Fast-Think-Creativity-Hyper-connected/dp/0749478861 36 Iain McGilchrist, ‘The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World’, TED, October 2011. 37 https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/boris-johnson-faces-election-wipeout-unless-he-rejects-rampant-individualism-new-poll-warns 38 https://www.ukonward.com/thepoliticsofbelonging/ 7 MODERNISING THE MANAGEMENT THAT GOVERNS US ‘The only real way to reform the civil service system is to reform the political system, and no government’s going to reform the system that put it into power.’

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Theresa May said she wanted to make Britain a country that works for everyone, adding, ‘When it comes to opportunity, we won’t entrench the advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.’36 Progress is being made. Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently committed to 50 per cent of Conservative candidates at the next general election being female.37 It is recognition that the world is changing. But the progress over the past twenty years has been slow, as we saw in Chapter 2. That’s also the conclusion of the Social Mobility Commission’s two papers ‘Time for change: an assessment of government policies on social mobility 1997–2017’38 and ‘Social mobility in Great Britain – state of the nation 2018 to 2019’.39 A 2018 OECD report on the subject measured the number of generations it would take for the descendants of a child born into the lowest 10 per cent of socio-economic groups to earn the national average wage.

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business climate, call centre, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, first-past-the-post, food desert, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, meme stock, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, Paris climate accords, pension reform, QAnon, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, statistical model, Steve Bannon, The Chicago School, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Across the Atlantic, British newspaper columnists homed in on the assertion in my opening statement that my working-class background and northern English accent limited my professional prospects in the United Kingdom. They pondered the persistence of class and accent discrimination in England and the barriers they posed to career advancement. Somewhat bizarrely, they compared my unlikely professional trajectory to that of British prime minister Boris Johnson, the privileged and plummy-accented product of Eton and Oxford. I was suddenly the “improbable” Fiona Hill (as the Financial Times put it six months later in a June 2020 feature). The newspaper articles, the comments that accompanied them online, subsequent letters to the editor, and personal letters sent directly to me posed a series of questions: Was it true that my background had held me back in the UK in the 1980s?

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Farage had never actually been elected to a seat in the British Parliament in Westminster. Nonetheless, he claimed to channel the desire of the entire British population to be liberated from Europe. Several other vocal and flamboyant political activists jumped into the Brexit fray, including future British prime minister Boris Johnson, who tried to out-Farage Farage—to leverage the Brexit campaign for himself and accelerate his political momentum up the echelons of the Conservative Party. The Remain campaign was run by Prime Minister Cameron’s government, but with a limited budget and little enthusiasm. The government, and UK pollsters initially presumed the British electorate would continue to see the benefits of EU membership and vote to remain by a small but comfortable margin.

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They had just stood by and done nothing as jobs in the North East were decimated. The last huge steelworks and massive blast furnace in the North East, in Redcar, where several of Mam’s cousins had worked, closed down in 2015. This definitely colored people’s views on the eve of the Brexit referendum. During the Brexit campaign, Nigel Farage and also future prime minister Boris Johnson blamed the EU for these closures as well as for the growing strain on the budgets of the NHS, one of the last big regional employers. So people in Bishop Auckland and the North East voted for the Tories to “get Brexit done” and bring money and attention back home. Similarly, in the United States, workers believed the Democratic Party had abandoned them.

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

Alan Greenspan, book value, Boris Johnson, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Corn Laws, credit crunch, cross-subsidies, Diane Coyle, estate planning, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, ghettoisation, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land tenure, land value tax, late capitalism, market clearing, Martin Wolf, New Journalism, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, radical decentralization, Right to Buy, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, wealth creators

So while its main focus is on the twentieth century, it insists that a true grasp of the political economy of land in contemporary Britain requires us to peer back nearly a thousand years, to the Norman invasion, the formalization of a system of feudal tenure, and the production in 1086 of the first, famous survey of national (at least, English and Welsh) landownership: the Domesday Book. The Book’s echoes, after all, are still with us, and part of our subsequent story: when in 2014, for instance, business interests urged the then London mayor, Boris Johnson, to identify and sell the capital’s surplus public land, they advised him to first create ‘a 21st Century Domesday Book for London so we know where this land is’.1 And while this chapter looks mainly at the history of public land, it also considers those types of landownership to which public ownership represents – and always has represented – a political alternative, in the absence of which the story of public land per se clearly cannot be told.

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Neither, of course, is private-sector influence limited to ideas and hands-on ‘assistance’. The private sector also cajoles. It recommends. It lobbies. And its lobbying is often underwritten or accompanied by monetary payment. In March 2014, the following headline appeared in London’s Evening Standard: ‘Sell Public Land to Solve Housing Crisis, Boris Johnson Is Told.’1 And in this case it was not Whitehall doing the telling. Johnson, then London mayor, was being instructed to privatize public land in the capital by London First, a business lobby group. He would hear the same message from the Berkeley Group, one of Britain’s leading property developers.

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Often those injunctions, like London First’s, have been issued in public, and we will encounter more of them, some more subtle than others. But one imagines many have also been made in private, behind closed doors. In 2014, Aditya Chakrabortty reported on a particularly striking and pertinent example of lobbying. Boris Johnson was again involved. London was for the first time hosting the UK’s own version of the annual property sector shindig MIPIM, held in Cannes. Chakrabortty described how each year ‘big money developers invite town hall executives for secret discussions aboard private yachts’ – in 2013, Australia’s Lend Lease had flown to Cannes the head of the very London council, Southwark, from which it acquired London’s Heygate council estate at what Chakrabortty called ‘a knockdown price’ (see Chapter 5) – and he raged that ‘in a shamefully undemocratic development system, this is one of the most untransparent forums of the lot’.

Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty First Century City by Anna Minton

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, call centre, crack epidemic, credit crunch, deindustrialization, East Village, energy security, Evgeny Morozov, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, ghettoisation, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Kickstarter, moral panic, new economy, New Urbanism, race to the bottom, rent control, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, Silicon Valley, Steven Pinker, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, trickle-down economics, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban renewal, white flight, white picket fence, World Values Survey, young professional

But Shapps has made it clear that he believes ‘the current system strikes the right balance’, promising that ‘the Government has no plans to create any burdensome red tape and bureaucracy’.32 For a great many people in Newham and the neighbouring Olympic boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hackney the main impact of 2012 on their daily lives will be the further marketization of housing for the poor, which is being introduced as the Olympic preparations come to a close. The cuts in housing benefit, which come into force in April 2012, will affect the 40 per cent or so of private renters in Newham on benefit and have caused controversy, with Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson likening them to ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’ of poorer people from inner London.33 Research by Cambridge University confirms his fears that only a handful of outer London boroughs will be affordable to those on housing benefit, as benefit will now only cover the bottom 30 per cent of market rents in an area, rather than the average.

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But although the advent of shared space in some parts of the UK has coincided with London 2012, the Olympic developments themselves are characterized by exactly the opposite, with exceptionally high levels of security. Indeed, the UK’s track record in security and surveillance was considered a key strength of London’s bid. Once London won the bid, Mayor Boris Johnson described the security operation to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. He said that ‘broadly speaking, there will be quite substantial security and protection around the main Olympic venues of the kind that you would expect, and you will be seeing more detail about that nearer the time, but it will be not unlike what they did in China.’37 ‘Island security’ is the popular term among 2012 security practitioners, who talk of ‘locking down’ the Olympic Park.

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Rugg, Julie, Rhodes, David, The Private Rented Sector: Its contribution and Potential’, Centre for Housing Policy, University of York, 2008 31. ‘Shapps promises "no more red tape" for private landlords’, Communities and Local Government, http://www.communities.gov.uk/newsstories/newsroom/1611643, 10/6/10 32. ‘Boris Johnson won’t accept “Kosovo-style social cleansing”, BBC News, 28/10/10 33. Fenton, Alex, ‘Housing Benefit reform and the spatial segregation of low-income households in London’, Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research, University of Cambridge, January 2011 34. There are more changes planned which Shelter warn will make the situation worse, in particular cuts to the Single Room Allowance which will mean that only people over 35, rather than 25 as at the time of writing, will be eligible.

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

3D printing, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, charter city, circular economy, clean water, colonial exploitation, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, European colonialism, failed state, gentrification, global pandemic, Global Witness, green new deal, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, job automation, joint-stock company, Kim Stanley Robinson, labour mobility, load shedding, lockdown, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, megacity, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, old age dependency ratio, open borders, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, place-making, planetary scale, plyscraper, polynesian navigation, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Cities work as economic hubs because they are concentrated nodes of connectivity – people exchange money and resources, trade labour and combine ideas to create something bigger than the sum of their parts. Restricting any part of this exchange limits the economy, as the UK discovered after its decision to end freedom of movement between Britain and the EU resulted in labour shortages that reduced the availability of everything from food to fuel. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, comparing immigrants to heroin, complained businesses had been able to ‘mainline low-wage, low-cost immigration for a very long time’ and needed to wean themselves off, but nevertheless was forced to issue emergency visas in a desperate attempt to attract delivery drivers, fruit-pickers and other essential labour.

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‘Immigrants bolster patriotism and national trust in American government institutions,’ the researchers concluded.14 This is borne out in countless examples, including the Irish-born French immigrant Samuel Beckett, who was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his heroism in the French Resistance, many of the UK’s leaders – Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary Priti Patel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan are all first- or second-generation immigrants – and social reformers such as Thomas Paine, the British-born American immigrant whose pamphlets helped inspire the patriots to declare American independence in 1776. Today, just one in seven of us is a migrant, and of these only 20 per cent crossed an international border.

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Kung peoples Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh Kyrgyzstan Lagos Lake Chad Lammy, David land ownership language/linguistics; language classes for new arrivals; and nation state Laos Las Vegas Latin America: Amazon region; first nation states in; fragile social systems in; impact of climate emergency; mega-El Niño (1997–8); migrants in Parla, Spain; rivers fed by glaciers; rural to urban migration League of Nations Leipzig liberalism Libya Lima livestock farming: by drone; feeding of animals; impact of drought; inhumane treatment of animals; insects as feed; land and water used for; meat and dairy subsidies; need for huge reduction in Ljubljana, Slovenia locust plagues London Macau Maillard chemical reaction maize production, global Malacca Straits Malaysia Maldives Mali Manchester Mangroves Marijuana marine life: fish populations; impact of global warming; starved of oxygen by algae marshes Mayan civilization Mayors Migration Council McCarthy, Kate McCay, Adam McConnell, Ed Medellín, Colombia media, prejudice against migrants Mediterranean Mekong River Melbourne, Pixel Building Merkel, Angela Mesopotamia Met Office, UK, methane Mexico Mexico City Miami Micronesians Middle East migrant cities: the Arctic as new region for; charter cities option; and circulation of community resources; ‘climate haven’ cities; creation of entirely new cities; as cultural factories; environmental sustainability; evidence of decline of tribalism in; expanding existing cities; in the new north; planning future cities; repurposing/adaptation of; successful urban development/planning in; as synergistic; training for rural migrants; water-management infrastructure migrants/immigrants: arrival in family groups; ‘Bangla’ communities in London; contribution to global GDP; creation of active markets by; distinction between refugees and; dominant hostile narratives of in West; ‘economic migrant’ term; evidence of decline in hostility towards; harnessing potential of; immigrant inclusion programmes; as indentured labour; internal migration; Boris Johnson’s language on; language classes for; levels of patriotism of; living in slums/shanty towns; mentoring and support for; as percentage of global population; racist and prejudicial tropes about; returning to origin countries; seasonal; situations of appalling abuse/danger; state-sponsored support needed for migration: and advantageous genetic modifications; barriers to today; as benefitting everyone; controlled by city authorities; as deeply interwoven with cooperation; and diversified genes/culture; evidence of decline of anti-immigrant feeling; free movement ends in twentieth century; and historic climate change; historical; human displacement at record levels; inherited routes and channels; and mental illness; as not reduced by aid; reluctance to move; and skin colour; of stuff/resources; as survival strategy used widely in nature; as valid and essential part of human nature; world’s major cities created by migration, arguments against/fears around: fears around crime and violence; and jobs; long evolutionary roots to prejudice; in the media; populist politicians; pressure on inadequate host services; prospect of radical change; resting on true/pure national identity idea; security/terrorism issues; and welfare systems migration, climate-driven: Covid cooperation as hopeful example; due to flooding; and geopolitical mindset; global agreement on pathways needed; hypothetical scenarios/models enabling; as inevitable; Kiribati’s ‘migration with dignity’ programme; mass movement already under way; move to higher elevations; national and regional relocation schemes; need for strong nation-states; need to plan practically now; numbers affected today; predicted future numbers; and Refugee Convention (1951); risk of domination by wealthy elites; as solution not problem; speed of movement of climate niches; water issues to be main driver migration, urban; access to health and education; community sponsorship models; family retention of farmland; and intensive infrastructure development; as most effective route out of poverty; population fall due to; role of business in migrant integration; from rural areas; successful management of; as unplanned and iterative; in the West (1850–1910); and workforce shortages in global north Miller, David mineral supples/extraction mining industry Mongla (Bangladesh) Mongolian steppes Morocco Mumbai, mussels Myanmar Nairobi Nansen, Fridtjof nation state: Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’; claims that country is ‘too full’; first created by revolutionaries; and genetic variation; and geopolitical mindset; and language; leases/purchases of territory by; model as often failing; nationality as arbitrary line drawn on map; need for reinvention of; as norm after First World War; and system of borders; translocation of existing nation states National Health Service (UK) national identity: and anti-immigrant feeling; and bureaucracy; creation of first nation states; ethnic and cultural pluralism as the norm; evidence of decline of tribalism; feelings of loss of/decline; and ideology of nationalism; lack of political meaning before end of eighteenth century; nation state as norm after First World War; need to change immigration narrative; patriotism of welcomed migrants; predicated on mythology of homogeneity; and supranational identity; transition to pan-species identity Nauru Neanderthals negative emissions technologies Netherlands; Delta Programme; Energiesprong house insulation Neukölln (Berlin) New Orleans New Story (nonprofit) New York City; ‘Big U’ seawall project; NYCID programme New Zealand; Managed Retreat and Climate Adaptation Act Newtok, Alaska Nicaragua Niger, West Africa Nigeria nitrogen Noem, Kristi nomadic pastoralism Nordic nations Normans North Korea Northern Ireland Northwest Passage Norway Notre Dame, University of, Global Adaptation Initiative nuclear power; fusion reactor technology Nusantara (Borneo) Nuuk (Greenland) Obayashi (Japanese firm) oceans/seas: acidification; as energy source in north; and enhanced weathering techniques; global warming absorbed by; impact of 4° C-hotter world; impact of carbon emissions; jellyfish explosions; long-distance migratory voyages; marine heatwaves; and migratory raiders; Miocene Era sea levels; North Atlantic currents; Northwest Passage; nutrient and oxygen circulation; ocean fertilization; release of carbon dioxide; rise in sea levels; sea grasses; sourcing food from; toxic algae blooms oil industry OmniTrax (US freight company) Ottoman Turks Overjeria, Bolivian village Paine, Thomas Pakistan Palaeo-Eskimos, Canadian palaeontology Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paris climate meeting (2015) Parla (near Madrid) passports Patagonia Patel, Priti patriotism Pearl River Delta Peatlands people-traffickers Peri, Giovanni permafrost, infrastructure built on Persian Gulf Peru Pfizer vaccine Philippines; nurses from Philistines Photios of Constantinople Phuket, Thailand Phytoplankton plains/steppes plants/vegetation: destruction of by wildfires; genetic tools to help adaptation; grass verge areas; heat damage to crops; during last ice age; move to plant-based diet; planted to increase crop yields; replanting of; rooftop vegetation/gardens plastic waste Pleistocene epoch Poland political and socioeconomic systems: in Africa; benefits to democracy of migration; cooperation during Covid upheaval; corporate food system; democracy based on inclusiveness; development of governance systems; end of multinational empires; erosion in the powers of global bodies; failure over decarbonization; far-right political parties/groups; fossil fuels as embedded in; geopolitical constraints; geopolitical implications of farming’s shift north; global institutions with enforceable powers needed; and ideal temperature question; inequality as failure of policy; institutional bias over skin-colour; institutional trust levels; international diplomacy; move from feudalism to centralized monarchy; nation-state model spreads; need for global planning over migration; need for redistributive policies; need for strong nation-states; new regional unions option; pledge of ‘strong borders’ as vote-winner; possible new political institutions/structures; post-war institutions and inequality; strong/stable institutions in north; translocation of existing nation states; and transnational rivers/’water towers’; vested interests in the rich world; Westphalian state system pollinators pollution Polynesians populist politicians Portugal postcolonial diaspora poverty see inequality and poverty Próspera ZEDE (embryonic charter city) Prussia Puerto Rico Putin, Vladimir Pygmies Qatar race and ethnicity: and anti-immigrant feeling; deliberately prejudicial policies; and demographic change; European colonialism; fallacy of biological ‘race’; heat related inequalities; unconscious bias in society; white supremacists rain gardens rainfall: altering patterns of; captured by roof gardens/storage; seeding of clouds rare earth metals Raworth, Kate, Doughnut Economics, recycling Refugee Convention (1951) refugees: from Afghanistan; barred from working; Burmese Rohingya in Bangladesh; climate change not in legal definition of; distinction between migrants and; EU seeks quota system for; hostile rhetoric towards; judgemental terms used about; and Nansen passports; privately sponsored; from Syrian crisis (2015–16) see also asylum-seekers renewable power production: as adding to, not replacing, fossil fuels; artificial light delivered by LEDs; hybrid hydro-solar power concept; hydroelectric plants; as leading job creator; and net zero targets; phenomenal rise in; refrigerant units in global south; solar-powered closed-cycle farming; storage technology; zero-carbon new-builds Republic of the Congo restoring our planet’s habitability; biodiversity loss; ‘blue carbon’; climate change-biodiversity loss as linked; cooling of global temperatures; decarbonizing measures; enhanced weathering techniques; future repopulation of abandoned regions; genetic tools to help species adapt; as global, labour-intensive task; natural restoration after human abandonment; nature guardianship in tropical regions; need for speed; negative emissions technologies; ocean fertilization; paying communities to protect ecosystems; regenerative agriculture; replanting of vegetation; solar radiation reduction tools, see also geoengineering retail services rice; SRI cultivation process rivers: drying out of; fed by glaciers; heavier rainfall as increasing flows; lack of in Gulf region; pollution discharged into; transnational Roatan, Caribbean island of Rocky Mountains Rome, ancient Romer, Paul Rotterdam rural living: and depopulation crisis; flight from drought/heat hit areas; impact of flooding; massive abandonment of in coming decades; migration to urban areas; and population expansion in Africa; remittances from urban migrants; as single largest killer today; and water scarcity Russell, Bertrand Russia: and charter cities model; depopulation crisis; economic benefits from global heating; economic sanctions on; expansion of agriculture in; infrastructure built on permafrost; invasion of Ukraine (2022); mega-heatwave (2010); migrant workforce in east; as potential area for charter cities; small-scale modular nuclear reactors in; water resources in Rwanda: Hutus and Tutsis in; special protective zones in; and UK asylum-seeker plan Salla, Finnish town of sanitation Saudi Arabia Saunders, Doug Sawiris, Naguib Scandinavia scientific discovery Scotland sea grasses Seasteading movement Seven Dials, London sex industry Shanghai sharing/circular economy Shenzhen Shyaam a-Mbul Siberia silicates Silicon Valley Silk Road Singapore sinkholes Skellefteå, Sweden slavery Slovenia slum dwellers; conditions at Kutupalong refugee camp; in Lagos; in Lima; and urban heat island effect; vulnerability to flooding social class/hierarchies: and anti-migrant attitudes; barriers erected against migration of the poorest; despair and anger of ‘left behind’ natives; development of; and gentrification; middle class migrants; myth of meritocracy; prejudice as often defensive fear-based reaction social networks; benefits of trade; cities as focal points for trade; Dunbar number; entangled ancestries/identities; forged by migrants; and knowledge flow; loss due to gentrification; migrants in family groups; and mistrust of outsiders; need for inclusive governance; and reluctance to migrate; in slum areas; social clustering of migrants; synergy created by; and unjust hierarchies; welcoming of strangers to social services see welfare systems and social services socioeconomic system see political and socioeconomic systems soil: ‘biochar’ use in; biomatter decay in; as carbon store; impact of heat on; impact of wildfires on; integrated soil-system management in China; and overuse of fertilizers; and perennial cereals; use of silicates in solar power Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative South Dakota South Korea Southern Ocean Soviet Union soya production Spain Spitalfields, London stateless persons Sudan sulphate cooling concept Sumerian civilization Sunak, Rishi Sweden Switzerland Syrian crisis (2015–16) Tabasco, Mexican state of Tabassum, Marina Tahiti Tajikistan Tanzania Tasmania textiles industry Thailand Thepdet, Supranee thermal wallpaper Thiel, Peter Thirty Years War Thwaites Glacier Tokyo Toltecs Tong, Anote Tourism trade and commerce; cities as focal points for networks; free movement of goods; free trade; global trade deals; origins and development of transport infrastructure: aviation; decarbonizing of; electric-powered vehicles; equitable access to; in global south; and limitations of battery weight; problems due to extreme heat; sail power as due a revival; in successful migrant cities; use of foot or pedal trees: American chestnut trees; cycles of burn and recovery; as ‘emissions offset’; giant sequoias; ‘green wall’ tree-planting projects; vine-like lianas Trestor, Anne Marie tropical regions: benefit of solar cooling idea; impact of climate emergency; nature guardianship in; population rise in Trump, Donald Tsipras, Alexis tundra Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu UAE Uganda Ukraine: maize exports; Russian invasion of (2022) United Kingdom: ageing population in; anti-immigrant feeling in; Brexit; Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962); and Covid pandemic; destruction of peatlands in; flood defences in London; historical migration to; history of granting asylum; ‘hostile environment’ policy; impact of climate emergency; and inevitability of change; low statutory sick pay level; migratory shift to southeast; planned fusion reactors; planning laws; renewable power production; Rwanda proposal for asylum-seekers; slow processing of asylum claims; small boats in English channel; wet-farming in United Nations: Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (2018); HCR; Human Rights Council; International Labour Organization; International Organization for Migration; and Nansen Passport concept; suggested new global migration body United States: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882); ‘climate-proof’ cities in; as created from global migrants; dam removal in; demographic change in; and depopulation crisis; and extreme La Niña events; and future climate problems; Green New Deal; heat related inequalities; Homestead Act; immigrant-founded companies; impact of climate emergency; indigenous communities; and inevitability of change; lack of universal healthcare in; leases/purchases of territory by; low spending on social services; mass incarceration of Mexicans in; meat industry in; migration to since 1980s; and mineral extraction; municipal codes; net zero commitment; nineteenth century migration to; patriotism of migrants; refugee children in detention camps; resettlement project in Louisiana; rural to urban migration; seeding of clouds in; Trump’s work visa restrictions; ‘urban visas’ in; yield gap in university towns urban development/planning: Bijlmermeer (outside Amsterdam); and elderly populations; and inclusive government policies; machizukuri process in Tokyo; need for integrated high-rise/low-rise; new canals/water features to combat heat; parks/squares/public spaces; planning and zoning laws; slum clearance programmes; social capital investment in cities USAID Uttarakhand, Indian state Uzbekistan Venezuela Venice Vermont Vietnam Vikings war/violent conflict: over water scarcity; triggered by climate upheaval water, fresh: circulated, cleaned, stored and reused; closed-circuit water recycling; conflict triggered by scarcity; crop irrigation; desalination techniques; drip-irrigation systems; evaporative losses; geopolitics of water control; held in glaciers; impact of heat on supplies; importance of new water policies; inland lake systems; need for urban underground reservoirs; new waterways and river diversions; pumping of groundwater; purified sewage recycled; as resource anxiety of this century; running dry of aquifers; salination of groundwater; used for livestock; water pricing/tax policies Waterloo, Ontario weather systems: cyclonic storms in Bay of Bengal; El Niño events; extreme La Niña events; extreme weather events; Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ); monsoon regions; trade winds welfare systems and social services: access to in migrant cities; and arguments against migration; and bureaucracy; despair and anger of ‘left behind’ natives; intensive infrastructure development needed; low spending on in USA; migrant access to; migration as benefitting social care systems; punitive restrictions on new migrants Westphalia, Peace of (1648) Whales wheat production, global Wilson, E.

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green by Henry Sanderson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, animal electricity, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, circular economy, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Exxon Valdez, Fairphone, Ford Model T, gigafactory, global supply chain, Global Witness, income per capita, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, megacity, Menlo Park, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, popular capitalism, purchasing power parity, QR code, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, Tesla Model S, The Chicago School, the new new thing, three-masted sailing ship, Tony Fadell, UNCLOS, WikiLeaks, work culture

Chapter 15 Cornwall’s Mining Revival 1 ‘Cornish Lithium to receive significant investment from UK government’s Getting Building Fund’, Cornish Lithium, https://cornishlithium.com/company-announcements/cornish-lithium-to-receive-significant-investment-from-uk-governments-getting-building-fund/. 2 ‘Debate between Boris Johnson and Steve Double’, 16 September 2021, www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/boris-johnson/vs/steve-double. 3 Buckley, J.A., The Cornish Mining Industry, A Brief History (Redruth, Tor Mark Press, 1992), p. 3. 4 Tonkin, B., ‘Heroic and tragic truth behind Poldark: Cornishmen shaped mining in Britain and pushed boundaries the world over’, Independent, 13 April 2015. 5 Schwartz, S., ‘Creating the cult of “Cousin Jack”: Cornish miners in Latin America 1812–1848 and the development of an international mining labour market’ (1999), https://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishlatin/Creating%20the%20Cult%20of%20Cousin%20Jack.pdf. 6 Pell, R., Grant, A., Deak, D., ‘Geothermal lithium: the final frontier of decarbonization’, Jade Cove Partners, May 2020. 7 See UK Environment Agency report, ‘Wheal Jane, a clear improvement’, https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/psc/tr3-6ee-uk-remediation-ltd/supporting_documents/1992%20EA%20pollution%20incident%20report.pdf.

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Wrathall was keen to show me the comments by UK minister Nadhim Zahawi the previous evening at a dinner to mark the launch of a new Critical Minerals Association, in which Zahawi had supported the development of UK resources. ‘The potential to become self-sufficient in lithium which Cornish mining represents will I think be incredibly important to the British economy,’ he had said.1 Boris Johnson, the prime minister, had also been supportive when he was asked the previous week in Parliament about lithium in Cornwall, saying, ‘It is a wonderful thing that Cornwall indeed boasts extensive resources of lithium, and we mean to exploit them.’2 Other politicians, however, were less enthusiastic.

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

Asperger Syndrome, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, deindustrialization, Etonian, facts on the ground, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mass immigration, meritocracy, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, pension reform, place-making, plutocrats, post-war consensus, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, rising living standards, social distancing, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, We are the 99%, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

She is a success story in her own right as editor of the Lady,a rather frumpy magazine that seems tobe largely read by posh women out in the shires. Indeed, the classifieds for nannies and domestic staff are among its big selling points. 'NANNY REQUIRED for delightful girls in West Byfleet,' reads one typical advert. And yet, despite being the sister of a senior Eton-educated Tory politician (although she argues that Boris Johnson's background is 'very different' from that of David Cameron), she expressed her disgust to me before the 2010 general election that 'the prospect is Old Etonians bankrolled by stockbrokers ... It's back to the days of Macmillan and Eden.' She has a point. All in all, twenty-three out of twenty-nine ministers in Cameron's first Cabinet were millionaires; 59 per cent went to private school, and just three attended a comprehensive.

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As part of her argument that they were personally responsible for their situation, she argued: 'The working class of the past had enormous self-respect. Men, however poor, wore suits and ties. Women scrubbed front steps. Mothers wouldn't have been seen dead wearing pyjamas in their own kitchen, let alone in public As Rachel Johnson (editor of the Lady and sister of Boris Johnson) puts it: 'What we're having is a media which is run by the middle classes, for the middle classes, of the middle classes, aren't we?' She is spot on. The journalists who have stirred up chav-hate are from a narrow, privileged background. Even papers with overwhelmingly working-class readerships join in the sport.

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Indeed, Shaun Bailey, a former Conservative candidate who was defeated in Hammersmith at the 2010 general election, had argued that the Tories would struggle to win inner-city seats 'because Labour has filled them with poor people'. Such was the outrage over the government's all-too-clear agenda that even London's mayor, the Conservative Boris Johnson, came out publicly to say that he would not accept 'Kosovo-style social cleansing' of the capital." Taken together, this is a toxic brew. Large numbers of people without secure work; low-paid work that fails to give people a comfortable existence; some of the highest levels of poverty in Western Europe; and millions left without affordable housing.

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America by Christopher Wylie

4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, availability heuristic, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, chief data officer, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, computer vision, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, deep learning, desegregation, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Etonian, fake news, first-past-the-post, gamification, gentleman farmer, Google Earth, growth hacking, housing crisis, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Julian Assange, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Stephen Fry, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Valery Gerasimov, web application, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

National sovereignty has always been a core part of British identity, and the Leave campaign argued that EU membership was undermining that sovereignty. Remain supporters countered by pointing to economic, trade, and national security benefits in the status quo. Vote Leave was led in public by the campaign’s lead spokesperson, Boris Johnson, a pompous man who was once mayor of London and was always a Conservative favorite, with some of the highest approval ratings among Conservative voters, and Michael Gove, who could be characterized as Johnson’s opposite. Lacking Johnson’s pomposity, Gove was more measured and was a favorite among the free-market-type libertarians in the U.K.

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Though they won by only 3.78 percent, the Brexiteers claimed the entire “will of the people” for themselves––and even when Trump lost the popular vote by 2.1 percent, he too claimed victory. Despite proven cheating, Vote Leave did not have its Brexit medal taken away. No one was disqualified from running in future campaigns, and Vote Leave’s two leaders, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, were both allowed to run for prime minister. Crimes waged against our democracy were not considered by the political class to be “real crime.” Many framed these transgressions as being on par with a parking fine, despite the very real harm we face when our civic institutions can be so easily undermined by criminals and hostile foreign states seeking to wage electoral terrorism on our society.

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In the United Kingdom, if a prime minister resigns mid-term, the convention is that Her Majesty the Queen appoints the new leader of the governing party as the new prime minister without a general election. This means that the internal party back-roomers, donors, and paid members of the party can bypass an election and choose among themselves who shall lead Britain. On July 23, the members of the Conservative Party decided that the new prime minister would be Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and lead advocate for leaving the European Union without any negotiated exit deal (often referred to as a “hard Brexit”). When forming his new government, Johnson appointed Dom Cummings, his former colleague from Vote Leave, to become one of his new senior advisers in 10 Downing Street.

The Miracle Pill by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, agricultural Revolution, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, car-free, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, coronavirus, COVID-19, driverless car, experimental subject, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, Sidewalk Labs, social distancing, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, twin studies, Wall-E, washing machines reduced drudgery

Many politicians have told me that car drivers tend to be much more vocal than people who more commonly travel by bike or on foot. So if you want a more human-friendly local area, it can be worth making that known. 10 So What Now? A New Era of Health I can remember exactly where I was at the moment the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced that the country was going into enforced lockdown to try to slow the spread of coronavirus. As with so many key political moments over the past few years – and perhaps not the best image for the message of this book – I was sitting hunched over a laptop, typing up facts and quotes to turn them into a news story as fast as possible.

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The other side of the equation is whether people, having been through the coronavirus restrictions, will become more accepting of subsequent interventionist government policies, particularly if they might improve outcomes in future outbreaks. Burnham, for one, thinks this is possible: ‘There is such an opportunity here, and I did sort of hear in Boris Johnson’s voice that he might get that. Time will tell. But it’s an opportunity I don’t think we’ll ever get again in quite this form. There is a public appetite to not go back to business as usual – people want this to be a moment of positive change, in many ways.’ Burnham says he has been thinking about the political transformation after voters removed Winston Churchill from office in 1945, despite him leading the nation through the war, with the Labour government bequeathing the UK its National Health Service and social security system.

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‘It’s never too early to start thinking about the future, to think about what kind of world we want to build as we emerge from this crisis. I do think that there’s a public mood about this. I think we owe it to have a sort of reassessment of what really matters in our society, and how do we build something better for the future.’8 On the same day I speak to Miliband, in fact at more or less the same time, a spokesman for Boris Johnson tells journalists, including one of my colleagues, that the prime minister is devising plans for a new approach to the nation’s health in the wake of his own near-fatal encounter with coronavirus. He is, we are told, extremely serious about this.9 No more than an hour after that, some other news emerges: my own city, London, is to close off large sections of the centre to all vehicles apart from buses, bicycles and pedestrians, at a stroke creating one of the biggest traffic-free areas in the world.10 It’s the kind of plan that even a few months earlier would have seemed an impossible dream, something that would need years of consultation.

British Rail by Christian Wolmar

accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, Beeching cuts, book value, Boris Johnson, COVID-19, driverless car, full employment, glass ceiling, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, vertical integration, éminence grise

The franchising arrangement, created a quarter of a century ago in order to stimulate competition, is now dead, and finding a replacement structure has proved difficult for a government motivated more by ideology than by a desire to do the best for the industry and its passengers. The publication of this book is indeed timely. In May 2021, the government led by Boris Johnson finally set out its vision for the railway in a White Paper entitled Great British Railways. This was the result of a process set in motion by the previous administration, led by Theresa May, when a wide-ranging timetable change in May 2018 resulted in chaos and thousands of cancellations because the various parts of the railway had not been coordinated in the absence of any overall ‘guiding mind’.

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This would merely be following the lesson of history which shows a continued and continuing expansion of road transport and a corresponding contraction in the volume of business handled by the railways … a streamlined railway system could surely be had for half the money that is now available.1 The editorial went on to argue that the railway had a ‘long history of failure’, rather neglecting its success as the first land-based mass-transit system. Marples was a colourful character, rather in the Boris Johnson mould, though his background was very different. A self-made man from humble origins with few strongly held political views, he was an innovator with an abundance of energy and drive. As Postmaster General, he introduced subscriber trunk dialling – which allowed long-distance calls to be made without going through an operator – and, at Transport, he oversaw the introduction of parking meters, seat belts and yellow lines.

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According to Charles Loft’s book on the Beeching years, Marples ‘demonstrated a consistent carelessness towards rules that impinged on his personal convenience, which appears to have stemmed from a reckless enjoyment of flirting with political danger almost for the hell of it’.2 He was spared by the mores of the time as Lord Denning, the eminent judge who had uncovered Marples’s predilection in the course of writing a report into the Profumo affair in the early 1960s, felt it was not appropriate to name the ‘minister’ concerned. Nevertheless, Marples’s identity was eventually revealed, and his career ended in disgrace as he had to flee to Monaco to avoid a ruinous tax bill, and he died in self-imposed exile in France in 1978. There are echoes of Boris Johnson in several aspects: his stream of ideas, his showmanship and, particularly, his cavalier attitude towards what constitutes appropriate behaviour for a minister. David Henshaw in his book The Great Railway Conspiracy argues that this crucial period in British railway history was the result of a coalition of interests inside and outside government that were trying actively to do the railway down.

Why We Can't Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, asset-backed security, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, biodiversity loss, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, declining real wages, deglobalization, degrowth, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, demand response, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green new deal, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", James Dyson, job automation, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land value tax, long term incentive plan, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, patent troll, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, popular capitalism, predatory finance, price stability, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

As Colin Ley puts it, ‘global financial markets are supposed to register the collective judgement of the owners of capital about how profitable it is to operate in a given country where all factors, including the risk of adverse government policies, are taken into account’ (Ley, C. (2001) Market driven politics, London: Verso, p 21). 7 Johnson is the Mayor of London and, like Cameron, a former member of the exclusive Oxford Bullingdon Club (in other words, gang), whose members used to get drunk and run round Oxford and smash up restaurants – with impunity. See also Huffington Post UK (2013) ‘Is being a banker genetic? Boris Johnson looks to intelligence to explain equality gap’, 28 November, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/28/iq-intelligence-boris-johnson-_n_4355372.html. 8 Bourdieu, P. (1993) Sociology in question, London: Sage, p 14. 9 Chakrabortty, A. (2013) ‘Looking for a party funding scandal: try David Cameron’s Conservatives’, Guardian, 8 July, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/08/party-funding-scandal-david-cameron-conservatives. 10 Froud, J. et al. (2012) ‘Groundhog Day: elite power, democratic disconnects and the failure of financial reform in the UK’, CRESC Working Paper No 108, University of Manchester, p 16, http://www.cresc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Groundhog%20Day%20Elite%20power,%20democratic%20disconnects%20and%20the%20failure%20of%20financial%20reform%20in%20the%20UK%20CRESC%20WP108%20(Version%202).pdf. 11 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2011) ‘Tory Party funding from City doubles under Cameron’, 8 February, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/02/08/city-financing-of-the-conservative-party-doublesunder-cameron/. 12 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2011) ‘Hedge funds, financiers and private equity make up 27% of Tory funding’, 30 September, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/09/30/hedgefunds-financiers-and-private-equity-tycoons-make-up-27-of-tory-funding/. 13 Hutton, W. (2010) Them and us, London: Little, Brown, p 179. 14 Powerbase (2001) ‘New Labour: donors’, http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/New_Labour:_Donors. 15 Peston, R. (2008) ‘Pointing fingers at the plutocrats’, Telegraph, 26 January, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/2783334/Pointing-fingers-at-the-plutocrats.html. 16 Wintour, P. (2013) ‘Labour backer says £1.65m donation was given in shares to avoid tax’, Guardian, 6 June, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/06/labour-party-backer-donation-tax.

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Much of what people – including Tea Party members – ‘freely’ pay out as rent and as interest on debt to rentiers, together with the profit they produce for their employer, is unearned; the recipients of these payments are the ones that the slogan should be addressed to. ELEVEN The myth of the level playing field People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. (C. Wright Mills, 1956)44 Privileged people born into rich families, like Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, love to gush about meritocracy, ‘aspiration’ and hard work so as to distract attention from their privilege. Margaret Thatcher loved to play up her humble grocer’s daughter origins, while keeping silent on the benefits of marrying a millionaire ex-public school boy who funded her training as a barrister and bought two houses for them, one of them in Chelsea.

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Formerly the Tory party got most of its money from membership dues and local fundraising. Now it gets most from business. Financial sector donations have taken the lead, doubling under Cameron’s leadership, to make up 50.8% of party funding,11 with 27% coming from hedge funds and private equity.12 In 2008, 77% of Boris Johnson’s London mayoral campaign was funded by hedge funds and private equity firms. Are you surprised that Johnson is an opponent of regulation for the City?13 Things have changed for Labour, too. Where it once got 90% of its income from trade unions, under New Labour, this fell to 30% by 2001 as Tony Blair and allies managed to win over corporate donors by distancing themselves from Labour’s working-class origins and ingratiating themselves with the rich.14 Between 2001 and 2008, private equity bosses Sir Ronnie Cohen and Nigel Doughty contributed £1.8 million and £1 million respectively to Labour, the former Goldman Sachs partner John Aisbitt gave £750,000 and hedge fund executive William Bollinger gave £510,000.

No Such Thing as Society by Andy McSmith

"there is no alternative" (TINA), anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Brixton riot, Bullingdon Club, call centre, cuban missile crisis, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, Farzad Bazoft, feminist movement, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, full employment, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, illegal immigration, index card, John Bercow, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Live Aid, loadsamoney, long peace, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, old-boy network, popular capitalism, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sloane Ranger, South Sea Bubble, spread of share-ownership, Stephen Fry, strikebreaker, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban decay, Winter of Discontent, young professional

There was Paul Weller, lead singer of The Jam, a scaffolder’s son from Woking in Surrey, whose ambitious father nurtured his obsession with rock music and was his manager for thirty years. Weller was aged tweenty-one in 1979, when he saw television pictures of Eton schoolboys jeering at ‘Right to Work’ marchers. He retaliated with the song ‘Eton Rifles’, which reached No. 3. David Cameron and Boris Johnson, aged twelve and fifteen, were at Eton that year, and long afterwards Cameron appeared on a BBC programme called ‘The Jam Generation’ to claim that ‘Eton Rifles’ was his favourite song of all time, provoking a grumpy response from Weller – ‘Which part of it didn’t he get? It wasn’t intended as a fucking jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.’12 Another product of the times was the eight-member reggae band from Birmingham who thought it appropriate to call themselves UB40, after the form Unemployment Benefit 40, with which too many of their fans were familiar.

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Years later, two journalists researching the life of David Cameron came upon a photograph of the members of the Bullingdon Club, which Cameron had joined, for the academic year 1986–7. The photograph showed ten supremely confident young men posing in their navy-blue tailcoats, with white silk facings and gold buttons, and mustard waistcoats. Sitting on a step at the front was twenty-two-year-old Boris Johnson and standing languidly at the back, like the prince of all he surveyed, was David Cameron, aged nineteen or twenty.37 These ‘Buller’ lads needed funds way beyond the reach of most people of their age. Their tailcoats alone cost £1,000 at 1984 prices, and their alcohol-fuelled dinners at Oxford’s finest restaurants cost about £400 a time.38 Dinner of en ended with high jinks, in which these privileged kids displayed their indifference to law and order.

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Sales of the Sun in the Liverpool area crashed. The management admitted that circulation in central Merseyside fell from 140,000 to 100,000; in the whole Merseyside region, it is estimated to have gone down from 320,000 to 204,000.33 The boycott endured for years, eventually forcing a begrudging apology from the Sun and, later still, from Boris Johnson after the Spectator magazine, which he then edited, accused Liverpool of ‘wallowing in grief’, In the immediate aftermath, the Hillsborough tragedy did nothing to shift the government’s firmly held belief that the sole problem with football was the hooligans who followed it. Five months afterwards, in September 1989, the England team travelled to Stockholm for a World Cup qualifier, followed by a press corps who were expected to file stories of English hooligans on the rampage.

Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth by Selina Todd

assortative mating, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, deskilling, DIY culture, emotional labour, Etonian, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial independence, full employment, Gini coefficient, greed is good, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, meritocracy, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, profit motive, rent control, Right to Buy, school choice, social distancing, statistical model, The Home Computer Revolution, The Spirit Level, traveling salesman, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War, young professional

., Social Class in the 21st Century, chapter 8. 34 Katharine Burn and Ann Childs, ‘Responding to poverty through education and teacher education initiatives’, Journal of Education for Teaching, Vol. 42, no. 4, 2016. 35 Quoted in ‘Boris Johnson evokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech’, Guardian, 27 November 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/27/boris-johnson-thatcher-greed-good, consulted 5 June 2016. 36 Carla Ayrton et al., Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2016, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2017. 37 Social Mobility Commission, Time for Change, p. 5. 38 Quoted in Diane Reay, ‘Social mobility, a panacea for our times’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 34, nos 5–6, 2013, p. 667. 39 Paul Bolton, ‘Education: historical statistics’, Note SN/SG/4252, House of Commons Library, 2012, https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/22771/1/SN04252.pdf. 40 On the impact of recession on private school rolls after 2007, see ‘Demand for state schools rises as recession hits’, Guardian, 19 December 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/dec/18/schools-private-recession, consulted 5 March 2018; ‘Recession forces many to give up private schools’, Telegraph, 23 November 2008, and ‘Eton headmaster: Private schools “may close”’, Telegraph, 27 January 2009.

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‘I want to see social mobility, as it did in the decades after the war, rising once again, a dominant feature of British life’, Prime Minister Blair announced.2 This commitment united all the governments that succeeded his: Gordon Brown’s Labour administration of 2007–10, David Cameron’s coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats between 2010 and 2015, and the Conservative governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson that followed. But these politicians presided over growing inequality and a decline in chances to climb the ladder. The two were connected: as the highest rungs on the ladder grew further apart from the rest, they became harder to reach. Between the 1990s and the 2010s the richest 5 per cent of people in Britain grew wealthier, while everyone else fell further behind.3 Successive governments, together with those at the top of big business and the media, used the rhetoric of social mobility to justify this unequal status quo.

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Labour believed that social mobility could go hand in hand with social policies designed to narrow social and economic inequality. But the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were in favour of significant disparities in wealth, and saw social mobility strategies as replacements for social policies that were designed to prevent or minimise poverty and inequality.34 In 2013 the Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson – an Old Etonian who would become prime minister six years later – made the case for focusing on social mobility rather than narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor. ‘[S]ome measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity’, he said.

The Great Post Office Scandal: The Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound Scandal Which Put Innocent People in Jail by Nick Wallis

Asperger Syndrome, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business process, call centre, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Dominic Cummings, forensic accounting, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, lockdown, paper trading, social distancing, Wayback Machine, work culture

Whilst the lawyers were shuttling back and forth between the parties to see if they could get anywhere, most journalists following the story had 16 December in their diaries. At 8.30am on 11 December 2019, I was looking at the prospects list in the 5 News morning meeting on the fifth floor of the ITN building in Gray’s Inn Road. It was the day before the general election, which would see Boris Johnson’s Conservatives confirmed in power for another five years. At 8.48am I got a text from Caroline Wagstaff at Luther Pendragon, Freeths’ PR firm. It read, ‘I am sending you an email at 9am so you might want to be near a computer.’ The email was the joint announcement of a settlement to the Bates v Post Office litigation. ____________________ 1 In civil law, something called the statute of limitations means that an action must normally be brought within six years of an event happening.

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Callanan was silent on the need for any sort of investigation into the Post Office, and when challenged directly on whether anyone was going to be held to account, he told his fellow peers, ‘the government do not propose to take any further action against current or former directors.’ If that was the settled position of the government, it was given a kick 24 hours later by Boris Johnson. During Prime Minister’s Questions the Labour MP Kate Osborne mentioned her constituent, Chris Head, a Subpostmaster claimant and energetic campaigner. ‘Will the Prime Minister,’ she asked, ‘today assure Chris and others that he will commit to launching an independent inquiry?’ Johnson was unequivocal.

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O’Connell, Dawn Subpostmaster, Northolt, London. Convicted of false accounting. Conviction posthumously quashed at Court of Appeal on 23 April 2021. O’Connell, Mark Dawn O’Connell’s brother. O’Connell, Matt Dawn O’Connell’s son. Osborne, Kate MP Elicited promise of public inquiry from Boris Johnson. Owen, Albert MP Participated in the Westminster Hall debate in December 2014. Owens, Les Post Office non-executive director in 2012. Page, Carl Subpostmaster, Rugeley, Staffs. Convicted of theft at Stafford Crown Court. Conviction quashed at Court of Appeal on 23 April 2021. Page, Flora Barrister who worked with Paul Marshall and Aria Grace Law representing Seema Misra, Tracy Felstead and Janet Skinner.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, call centre, carried interest, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, computer age, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Santayana, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, microaggression, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, one-China policy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, telepresence, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

As the most educated people move to global cities, those with fewer qualifications find themselves shut out. The newly risen global cities outside the West, such as Dubai, overcome this problem by importing labour from poorer countries and putting them on visas that can be annulled at short notice. Western cities, such as London and Chicago, have no such luxury. In 2011, Boris Johnson, then London’s mayor, saw the downside when the capital’s fringes went on the rampage for several days, smashing up shops and burning cars, looting what they could not have. Five years later Britain’s left-behinds vetoed London’s economic interests in the Brexit referendum. To the West’s economic losers, cities like London and Chicago are not so much magnets as death stars.

…

Although I was a supporter of the European project, those six months inoculated me for life against working in a bureaucracy. It was a stifling experience. Journalism promised wind in my hair on an open road. A university friend urged me to look up his brother, a British journalist who had made his reputation lampooning the ways of Brussels. His name was Boris Johnson. His trade was slanted reporting. It was ‘better to be pissing in from the outside than pissing out from the inside’, Boris joked, paraphrasing Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous quip. Though I disagreed with Boris’s politics and his journalistic methods – he specialised in mischievous caricature – it was easy to see why he had gained such a following in the UK.

9 Lessons in Brexit by Ivan Rogers

Boris Johnson, continuous integration, imperial preference, non-tariff barriers

But, let me tell you, as someone dealing with both Presidents and their teams at the outset of this process: what the EU Institutions mean by Canada + is not remotely what ex-Brexit and Foreign Secretaries and the Institute of Economic Affairs scribes mean by it. The title page is the same; the contents pages are different. Not for nothing did an unkind Brussels source label Boris Johnson’s “plan A +” (another + of course), Chequers 3.0. That proposition, is, as he himself might have put it, “an inverted pyramid of piffle”. And aside from containing a wish list – an understandable wish list – of things that are not actually present in Canada’s EU deal, it does not solve the backstop.

Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis by Leo Hollis

Airbnb, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, cellular automata, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, complexity theory, congestion charging, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital map, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, Donald Shoup, East Village, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, Enrique Peñalosa, export processing zone, Firefox, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gini coefficient, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Leo Hollis, Lewis Mumford, Long Term Capital Management, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, negative equity, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, place-making, power law, Quicken Loans, Ray Oldenburg, Richard Florida, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, spice trade, Steve Jobs, technoutopianism, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, the High Line, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, trade route, traveling salesman, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, walkable city, white flight, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

The glass dome, which rises above the original 1870s building, stands above the central debating chamber, allowing visitors to look down into the room and observe democracy in action. Foster + Partners repeated the trick in 2002 with the new City Hall in London, home for the recently created Greater London Authority and mayor (who have respectively called the building ‘the glass testicle’ [Ken Livingstone] and more primly ‘the glass gonad’ [Boris Johnson]). The ovoid building was completely created in glass, transparent from all directions. A more recent, and more radical, experiment in transparency can be found at City Hall in Tallinn, Estonia, designed by the groundbreaking Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), who plan to create a vast periscope within the central council chamber, so that the politicians inside can look up and see the life upon the streets, focusing their minds on what they are supposed to be doing, and who they are supposed to be representing.

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In a 2010 survey 69 per cent of those tasked with developing policy in central London borough councils neither used social media nor were familiar with the term Gov 2.0. This was despite a strong governmental drive as outlined in the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury Report Power in People’s Hands and London mayors, first Ken Livingstone and then Boris Johnson, promoting transparency within London itself. In addition, the large public services were not keen on releasing their data. For some, the fear of losing control of the information and the prospect of painful scrutiny were too much to bear. In the case of much of the transport data, there was also a concern that it was too valuable to give away for free, as it could be used to generate considerable revenues.

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A similar injustice became apparent in April 2012 when Newham Council in the East End of London, the locale of the £9.3 billion Olympic Park, sent out letters to 500 families in local social housing informing them that they had to move out of London and relocate to the city of Stoke over 160 miles away. Months before, as part of the government’s austerity measures, a cap on all housing benefit had been imposed which made it almost impossible for London’s most needy to live in their home city. At the time, London mayor Boris Johnson caused controversy by calling the measure similar to Kosovan-style ‘ethnic cleansing’. When the news was announced, 350,000 were sitting on the housing waiting list for the whole city. Homes for London, the project set up by the charity Shelter, calculates that 1.8 million people will be pushed out of the city as a result of rising rents and the cap.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charlie Hebdo massacre, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, deglobalization, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Freestyle chess, gig economy, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job automation, knowledge economy, liberation theology, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, obamacare, pattern recognition, post-truth, post-work, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, TED Talk, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

Like Einstein and Dawkins, an illiterate maid also has free will, hence on election day her feelings – represented by her vote – count just as much as anybody else’s. Feelings guide not just the voters, but also the leaders. In the 2016 Brexit referendum the Leave campaign was headed together by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. After David Cameron resigned, Gove initially supported Johnson for the premiership, but at the very last minute Gove declared Johnson unfit for the position and announced his own intention to run for the job. Gove’s action, which destroyed Johnson’s chances, was described as a Machiavellian political assassination.4 But Gove defended his conduct by appealing to his feelings, explaining that ‘In every step in my political life I have asked myself one question: “What is the right thing to do?

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Gove’s action, which destroyed Johnson’s chances, was described as a Machiavellian political assassination.4 But Gove defended his conduct by appealing to his feelings, explaining that ‘In every step in my political life I have asked myself one question: “What is the right thing to do? What does your heart tell you?”’5 That’s why, according to Gove, he has fought so hard for Brexit, and that’s why he felt compelled to backstab his erstwhile ally Boris Johnson and bid for the alpha-dog position himself – because his heart told him to do it. This reliance on the heart might prove to be the Achilles heel of liberal democracy. For once somebody (whether in Beijing or in San Francisco) gains the technological ability to hack and manipulate the human heart, democratic politics will mutate into an emotional puppet show.

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Liberty 1 Margaret Thatcher, ‘Interview for Woman’s Own (“no such thing as society”)’, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, 23 September 1987. 2 Keith Stanovich, Who Is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning (New York: Psychology Press, 1999). 3 Richard Dawkins, ‘Richard Dawkins: We Need a New Party – the European Party’, New Statesman, 29 March 2017. 4 Steven Swinford, ‘Boris Johnson’s allies accuse Michael Gove of “systematic and calculated plot” to destroy his leadership hopes’, Telegraph, 30 June 2016; Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart, ‘Gove’s thunderbolt and Boris’s breaking point: a shocking Tory morning’, Guardian, 30 June 2016. 5 James Tapsfield, ‘Gove presents himself as the integrity candidate for Downing Street job but sticks the knife into Boris AGAIN’, Daily Mail, 1 July 2016. 6 In 2017 a Stanford team has produced an algorithm that can purportedly detect whether you are gay or straight with an accuracy of 91 per cent, based solely on analysing a few of your facial pictures (https://osf.io/zn79k).

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, anti-bias training, autism spectrum disorder, Bellingcat, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, deplatforming, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, fake news, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, gender pay gap, George Floyd, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, off grid, Overton Window, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech bro, young professional

The following year, DeVos proposed a major overhaul of college and university sexual misconduct procedures, including narrowing the definition of sexual harassment and increasing protections for students accused of misconduct. So the link between elected politicians and manosphere groups isn’t just a matter of conjecture. It is having a concrete impact. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also regularly made apparent allusions to manosphere, alt-right ideology, once claiming that female MPs were flocking to the Labour Party for its ‘planned erosion of male liberty – such as ending the right to drink in public places’ – and suggesting that female voters were turning to the party owing to the ‘fickleness of their sex’.

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In particular, d’Ancona suggested a direct link between Bannon’s apparent strategic input and Johnson’s Islamophobic and misogynistic newspaper piece. Soon afterwards, d’Ancona later revealed, he was bombarded with angry calls from Johnson. ‘I stopped counting at 15 – though the calls continued,’ he wrote in an article for news outlet Tortoise.34 ‘Boris Johnson was furious with me for writing about his contact with Steve Bannon.’ Specifically, according to d’Ancona, Johnson was furious that the journalist had linked Bannon’s advice to his column. In other words, he seemed desperate to avoid the inference that Bannon’s input had led him to spout classic manosphere and alt-right rhetoric in the mainstream press.

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, The Conversation, 14 November 2017 29 ‘Betsy DeVos Plans to Consult Men’s Rights Trolls About Campus Sexual Assault’, Slate, 11 July 2017 30 ‘The so-called “manosphere” is peopled with hundreds of websites, blogs and forums dedicated to savaging feminists in particular and women, very typically American women, in general’, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012 31 ‘Steve Bannon: Five Things to Know’, ADL 32 ‘How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists’, Mother Jones, August 2016 33 ‘White Nationalists Rejoice Trump’s Appointment of Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon’ Southern Poverty Law Center, 14 November 2016 34 ‘The horror, the horror’, Tortoise, 3 April 2019 35 ‘Only a proper Brexit can spare us from this toxic polarisation’, Daily Telegraph, 15 April 2019 36 ‘Steve Bannon: ‘We went back and forth’ on the themes of Johnson’s big speech’, The Guardian, 22 June 2019 37 ‘MPs’ fury at Boris Johnson’s “dangerous language”, BBC, 25 September 2019 38 ‘Man arrested outside office of Labour MP Jess Phillips’, The Guardian, 26 September 2019 39 ‘Trump defends response to Charlottesville violence, says he put it “perfectly” with “both sides” remark’, USA Today, 26 April 2019 40 ‘Dominic Cummings: Anger at MPs “not surprising”, PM’s adviser says’, BBC, 27 September 2019 41 ‘Labour MP calls for end to online anonymity after “600 rape threats” ’, The Guardian, 11 June 2018 42 ‘Ukip MEP candidate blamed feminists for rise in misogyny’, The Guardian, 22 April 2019 43 ‘Police investigate Ukip candidate over Jess Phillips rape comments’, The Guardian, 7 May 2019 44 ‘Under Siege For His Comments About Rape, UKIP’s Star Candidate Carl Benjamin Has Recruited Milo Yiannopoulos To Join His Campaign’, BuzzFeed, 8 May 2019 45 ‘Steve Bannon Targeted “Incels” Because They Are “Easy To Manipulate,” Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Says’, Newsweek, 29 October 2019 46 ‘Reddit’s TheRedPill, notorious for its misogyny, was founded by a New Hampshire state legislator’, Vox, 28 April 2017 47 ‘Red Pill Boss: All Feminists Want to Be Raped’, Daily Beast, 29 November 2017 48 ‘New Hampshire State Rep Who Created Reddit’s “Red Pill” Resigns’, Daily Beast, 22 May 2017 49 ‘Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism’, New York Review of Books, 19 March 2019 50 ‘Op-Ed: Hate on Jordan Peterson all you want, but he’s tapping into frustration that feminists shouldn’t ignore’, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2018 51 ‘Jordan Peterson: “I don’t think that men can control crazy women” ’, The Varsity, 8 October 2018 52 ‘Why Can’t People Hear What Jordan Peterson Is Saying?’

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by Douglas Murray

anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, borderless world, Boris Johnson, British Empire, centre right, cognitive dissonance, deindustrialization, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, gentrification, glass ceiling, high net worth, illegal immigration, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, open borders, post-industrial society, white flight

This was done not just through charges of ‘racism’ and ‘bigotry’, but in a series of deflecting tactics that became a replacement for action. All of these were identifiable in the wake of Britain’s 2011 census, including the demand that the public should just ‘get over it’. In a column titled ‘Let’s not dwell on immigration but sow the seeds of integration’, the then Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, responded to that census by saying, ‘We need to stop moaning about the dam-burst. It’s happened. There is nothing we can now do except make the process of absorption as eupeptic as possible.’2 Sunder Katwala from the left-wing think tank ‘British Future’ responded to the census in a similar tone, saying, ‘The question of do you want this to happen or don’t you want this to happen implies that you’ve got a choice and you could say “let’s not have any diversity”.’

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Grayling, himself a hugely successful immigrant from Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), said of the findings of the census, ‘I think on the whole it’s a very positive thing, a thing to be celebrated.’ The critic and playwright Bonnie Greer, also a highly successful immigrant (from America), agreed that it was a positive thing and said, like Boris Johnson, ‘It cannot be stopped.’5 Over the whole discussion the allure of this ‘get with the beat’ attitude prevailed. Perhaps the temptation to ‘go with the flow’ is so strong in this argument because the price for stepping outside the consensus is so uniquely high. Get a studio discussion about the budget wrong and you might be accused of financial ignorance or poor interpretation of the public mood.

…

, BBC, 10 February 2012. 13 Andrew Neather, ‘Don’t listen to the whingers – London needs immigrants’, Evening Standard, 22 October 2009. 14 Tom Bower, Broken Vows: Tony Blair and the Tragedy of Power, Faber & Faber, 2016, pp. 171–8. 15 Hugh Muir, ‘Hideously diverse Britain: The immigration “conspiracy”’, The Guardian, 2 March 2011. 16 Bower, Broken Vows, pp. 175–6. 17 ONS figures. 18 Ibid., Migration Statistics Quarterly Report, November 2015. HOW WE GOT HOOKED ON IMMIGRATION 1 This conversation from March 1959 was recalled by his colleague and confidant Alain Peyrefitte in C’était de Gaulle (1994) and is the subject of some contention. 2 Boris Johnson, ‘Let’s not dwell on immigration but sow the seeds of integration’, The Telegraph, 17 December 2012. 3 Sunder Katwala quoted in ‘Census shows rise in foreign-born’, BBC News, 11 December 2012. 4 YouGov poll for The Sunday Times. Fieldwork 13–14th December 2012. Available at http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/w0hvkihpjg/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-14-161212.pdf. 5 BBC Newsnight, 11 December 2012. 6 The Louise Casey review into Rotherham borough council, 4 February 2015. 7 Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain, Little Brown, 2004, pp. x and 2. 8 Barbara Roche speaking at TEDxEastEnd, uploaded 3 October 2011, ‘The British story of migration’ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard

Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, feminist movement, glass ceiling, knowledge economy, Saturday Night Live, wikimedia commons

Trolls are not particularly imaginative or nuanced, and one Twitter storm tends to look much like any other. But just occasionally there are new angles, or at least revealing comparisons to be made. I was very struck during, and just after, the UK general election in the summer of 2017 by two disastrous radio interviews given by the Labour MP Diane Abbott and the Tory Boris Johnson. Abbott completely fell to pieces over the cost of her party’s policy on police recruitment – at one point coming out with a figure that would have suggested that each new officer would have been paid about £8 a year. Johnson showed an equally embarrassing and stumbling ignorance on some of the new government’s headline commitments; he didn’t appear to have a clue on his party’s policies on racial discrimination in the criminal justice system or on access to higher Education.

A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s by Alwyn W. Turner

Alan Greenspan, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, British Empire, call centre, centre right, deindustrialization, demand response, Desert Island Discs, endogenous growth, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, full employment, gentrification, global village, greed is good, inflation targeting, lateral thinking, means of production, millennium bug, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, period drama, post-war consensus, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, upwardly mobile, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce

I simply don’t know what to do.’ The government’s response was drastic but politically necessary. At an estimated cost of over £4 billion, some three and a half million cattle were slaughtered and their corpses burnt. It was a true holocaust in the purest sense of the word, as the journalist Boris Johnson took pleasure in pointing out, and it raised enormous logistical problems. Around the country there built up huge piles of carcasses awaiting incineration, some of which, it was revealed, were being secretly dumped at landfill sites in an attempt to clear the backlog. Discussions opened with the power industry to see if it was worth converting generating stations to run on dead animals, though this was not pursued, perhaps because the idea of cattle replacing coal as a primary fuel would be the mother of all PR disasters for a government already perceived to have lost its way.

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The Times even allowed room for William Rees-Mogg, its former editor, to float the outlandish suggestion that Alan Clark might be the man for the job: ‘he is rash, amusing, grand, Eurosceptic, outspoken, scandalous, clever, arrogant, the extraordinary rather than the ordinary.’ (Rees-Mogg’s inability to foresee the future had long been a standing joke at Private Eye, though the best gag came from Boris Johnson, who once wrote of him that he ‘has predicted twelve of the last two recessions’.) The rumours grew into open speculation during that final year before the general election, which was now widely expected to be held in May 1997. This was the last possible date that Major could call it, and the assumption was that he was holding on in the hope that the public might change minds that had been made up years ago.

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The Conservatives had convinced themselves that they were starting to make up some ground on Labour, but the death of Diana halted any such advance: ‘That single event stopped our recovery in its tracks,’ commented one shadow minister. Instead they looked entirely lost in this new Britain, where public displays of emotion (‘Latin American peasant hagiolatry’, in the words of Boris Johnson) were not only acceptable but almost compulsory. A former cabinet minister expressed the confusion that had descended on the Tories: ‘I walked through the crowds in St James’s and realised this was no longer a country I truly understand.’ Tony Blair, on the other hand, was universally judged to have played a blinder, and an opinion poll a month later showed him achieving record levels of approval.

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place by Felix Marquardt

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, digital nomad, Donald Trump, George Floyd, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joi Ito, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, out of africa, phenotype, place-making, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sustainable-tourism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Yogi Berra, young professional

There isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that my father’s urge to get away from Germany had a lot to do with the weight of the country’s Nazi past (it also likely explains why the majority of his closest friends are Jewish). Nor is there any doubt in my mind that the specific brand of British Euroscepticism which eventually produced Brexit is intimately linked to the nostalgic, imperial vision of Britain contained in the school manuals of Boris Johnson, as academics Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson have compellingly argued.1 It’s a Britain that exists in the time just after a sort of parallel universe Second World War, with Britain the uncomplicated heroic victor, home of the Spitfire, Keep Calm and Carry On sangfroid, and bunting hung up in every street.

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In 2012, as part of her ‘hostile environment’ policy, Theresa May, the home secretary at that time, clamped down on student visas. Historically, international students who attended UK universities had two years to find a job following their studies. May reduced this to four months. The result was that a record low of 6,300 individuals stayed in the country after their studies. Boris Johnson’s administration reversed the policy in 2019, and so we may see greater numbers of young people staying in Britain after their studies. However, the first intake that this will affect is the coronavirus intake. It is a cliché, but the youth are the future. Any sane country should be at pains to attract young, dynamic people – not create a ‘hostile environment’ that pushes them away.

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann

4chan, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-communist, anti-globalists, augmented reality, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Chelsea Manning, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Brooks, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, immigration reform, imperial preference, income inequality, it's over 9,000, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberal capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microaggression, moral panic, Nate Silver, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, open borders, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, phenotype, postnationalism / post nation state, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, the built environment, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transcontinental railway, twin studies, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, white flight, working-age population, World Values Survey, young professional

Each of the parties ran its own campaign, hoping to leverage party loyalty to convince its base to back Remain and turn out to the polls. The Leave side, though structured as a cross-party effort, was equally divided. Vote Leave, the official Leave campaign, was chaired by Gisela Stuart, a Labour MP, but fronted by the Tory mayor of London Boris Johnson and Conservative MPs such as Chris Grayling, Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove. Vote Leave’s rhetoric focused on ‘respectable’ arguments around sovereignty and the freedom for Britain to make its own trade deals with growing economies. A second effort, Leave.eu, funded by UKIP donor Arron Banks and fronted by the party leader, Nigel Farage, was an insurgent campaign which concentrated on the immigration question.

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Dave Prentis, of the Unison trade union, branded the UKIP poster ‘an attempt to incite racial hatred’ and reported it to the police. ‘To pretend that migration to the UK is only about people who are not white is to peddle the racism that has no place in a modern, caring society. That’s why Unison has complained about this blatant attempt to incite racial hatred and breach UK race laws.’ At Vote Leave, Boris Johnson distanced himself from the poster, declaring, ‘I am passionately pro-immigration and pro-immigrants.’ The Archbishop of Canterbury accused the poster of ‘pandering to people’s worries and prejudices, that is, giving legitimization to racism’. Farage remained unmoved: ‘This is a photograph – an accurate, undoctored photograph – taken on 15 October last year following Angela Merkel’s call in the summer … most of the people coming are young males and, yes, they may be coming from countries that are not in a very happy state, they may be coming from places that are poorer than us, but the EU has made a fundamental error that risks the security of everybody.’92 The racist charge is appropriate in my view because the poster encourages irrational fears of Muslim immigrants.

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Those of mixed race, who share common ancestors with White British people, are growing faster than all minority groups and 8 in 10 of them marry whites. In the long run, today’s minorities will be absorbed into the majority and foreign identities will fade, as they have for public figures with immigrant ancestors like Boris Johnson or Peter Mandelson. Britain shapes its migrants, migration doesn’t shape Britain. The share of Brexit voters wanting EU immigration cut to zero was 23 per cent among those who read the first or no passage, but opposition dropped to 15 per cent among those reading the second passage on assimilation.

Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality by Laurence Scott

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, Apollo 11, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, colonial rule, crisis actor, cryptocurrency, deepfake, dematerialisation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, Internet of things, Joan Didion, job automation, Jon Ronson, late capitalism, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Narrative Science, Neil Armstrong, post-truth, Productivity paradox, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, Snapchat, SoftBank, technological determinism, TED Talk, Y2K, you are the product

Sky News created a sensational paradox in broadcasting these ‘off-camera’ remarks ‘caught on camera’. Both this weird clip’s form and its content suggest these two-sided times. Discussing Andrea Leadsom’s prospects, Clarke said, ‘So long as10 she understands that she’s not to deliver on some of the extremely stupid things she’s been saying.’ More recently, during a trip to a Myanmar temple, Boris Johnson was captured on camera muttering lines from a Rudyard Kipling poem, ‘Mandalay’. Given the colonial context of the poem, the UK Ambassador whispered to Johnson that it was ‘not appropriate’, and reminded him that he was ‘on mic’ for the duration of his idle performance. ‘Good stuff,’ Johnson replies, hoisting his smartphone to take a picture.

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Mike Matthews, Fremantle Media, 2015; ‘I know it’s …’, Instagram post by Nigella Lawson (@nigellalawson) on 25th July 2015 6 ‘a public health crisis …’, from the draft of ‘Republican Platform 2016’; ‘public health hazard …’, see Drafting Attorney RuthAnne Frost, ‘S.C.R. 9 Concurrent Resolution on the Public Health Crisis’, State of Utah, 29th March 2016. 7 ‘some told me …’, Maggie Jones, ‘What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn’, The New York Times, 7th February 2018. 8 ‘one of the …’, see Anjali Midha’s Twitter blog, ‘Study: Live-Tweeting lifts Tweet volume, builds a social audience for your show’, 18th September 2014. 9 ‘What an episode! …’, Tweet by Ross Kemp (@RossKemp) on 17th May 2016, www.twitter.com. 10 ‘So long as …’, see ‘Ken Clarke Ridicules Tory Candidates’, www.skynews.com; ‘not appropriate’, see ‘Boris Johnson recites Kipling poem in Myanmar temple’, Guardian News YouTube Channel, published 30th September 2017. 11 ‘New York is …’, Katie Couric interview for Crazy About Tiffany’s, dir. Matthew Miele, Quixotic Endeavors, 2016. 12 ‘an obscene amount …’, see ‘George Clooney on Why He’s Not Like the Koch Brothers’, NBC News YouTube Channel, published 18th April 2016. 13 ‘All right, I’ll …’, I was informed here by the work of Ian C.

QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance (Qi: Book of General Ignorance) by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Boris Johnson, British Empire, California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, dark matter, double helix, epigenetics, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, music of the spheres, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, out of africa, Ronald Reagan, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route

If you cast a shadow onto a set of bathroom scales, the light’s downward force is no longer there and you have created a negative weight. Unfortunately, no scales are sensitive enough to register such a tiny negative weight. A shadow covering the whole of greater London would only have as much effect on the capital’s mass as removing three Boris Johnsons. Russian scientist Pyotr Lebedev (1866–1912) first proved light exerts a force on an object due to its momentum in 1898. He suspended a wafer-thin piece of platinum foil in a vacuum jar and saw it move (very slightly) when a lamp was shone on it. Though the pressure exerted by light is imperceptible on Earth, one day it may be useful in space.

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Coventry has re-enacted the legend once a year on and off since 1678 with a ‘Godiva Parade’ or ‘Procession’. It was a bit coy to start with: in the first one Lady Godiva was played by a boy, and on another occasion, in Puritan times, the horse wore trousers. KATHY LETTE Do you think that would work today, if we suggested to Boris Johnson that if we rode naked through the town we could stop paying our taxes? STEPHEN Or maybe we could pay him not to ride naked through the streets of London. ALAN I prefer that idea. When did the first woman vote in Britain? It wasn’t in 1918. Some British women – those who owned property and were over 30 – won the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1918.

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks by David Rooney

Albert Einstein, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Charles Babbage, classic study, cloud computing, colonial rule, COVID-19, Danny Hillis, Doomsday Clock, European colonialism, Ford Model T, friendly fire, High speed trading, interchangeable parts, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Lewis Mumford, low skilled workers, Nelson Mandela, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, smart grid, Stewart Brand, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transatlantic slave trade, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, éminence grise

As the days and hours before the UK’s withdrawal from Europe ticked down, a group of Brexit-supporting MPs demanded that Big Ben be reinstated so that it could toll defiantly to mark the momentous event. The Conservative MP Mark Francois led the campaign, assisted by such political heavyweights as Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood, Nigel Farage, Matthew Hancock, Jacob Rees-Mogg and even the prime minister himself, Boris Johnson. Speaking imperiously in the House of Commons on January 9, 2020, Francois exclaimed: we will leave the European Union at 11 pm GMT on 31 January. As we leave at a precise specified time, those who wish to celebrate will need to look to a clock to mark the moment. It seems inconceivable to me and many colleagues that that clock should not be the most iconic timepiece in the world, Big Ben.

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In the end, rows over funding and costs meant the plan to ring in the moment of Brexit ground to a halt. Big Ben remained silent on the evening of January 31, as work on its refurbishment continued. Brexiteers, furious at what they described as “a Remainer plot,” found other ways to mark the moment.26 Boris Johnson banged a small gong inside 10 Downing Street. The journalist Ian Dunt reflected that “They spent the whole week talking about bongs on Big Ben. The sheer scale of the lunacy is difficult to fully comprehend. What you are seeing, more or less in real time, is a nation turn into the clown car model of itself.”27 It should have come as no surprise.

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

(Reagan once called the peaceful transfer of power the ‘magic’ of the free world.) Thatcher’s Tories have abandoned the European single market she was once instrumental in developing, and have simultaneously abandoned many other economic orthodoxies, toying with more active industrial policies and ‘Buy British’ slogans – a new attitude that Boris Johnson in an unguarded moment happened to summarize as ‘fuck business’. His short-lived successor, Liz Truss, who famously declared that large-scale imports of cheese were ‘a disgrace’, tried to invoke the Iron Lady, albeit through her boldness rather than her policies. Instead, Truss railed against the ‘consensus of the Treasury, of economists, with the Financial Times’ that budgets should be balanced and went on to doom her premiership with a massive, unfunded package of energy subsidies and tax cuts, which markets refused to finance.

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What does the collective utopia look like that would fill the empty hearts of such diverse people as Stephen Fry, MrBeast, Elon Musk, Billie Eilish, Roger Federer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Danielle Steel, Richard Dawkins, PewDiePie, Robert Downey Jr, Nick Cave, LeBron James, Larry David, Donald Trump, Kylie Jenner, The Rock, Boris Johnson, Quentin Tarantino, Posh Spice, Robert Smith, Chris Rock, Blixa Bargeld, Neal Stephenson, Kim Kardashian, Lionel Messi, Johan Norberg and some 7.9 billion more?11 Liberalism is not based on ignoring the meaning of life but on believing that more people have a chance to find that meaning if they have the freedom to search for it.

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel, Stian Westlake

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Andrei Shleifer, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book value, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, congestion charging, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, Diane Coyle, Dominic Cummings, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, equity risk premium, Erik Brynjolfsson, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, facts on the ground, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gentrification, Goodhart's law, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, index fund, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job-hopping, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, market design, Martin Wolf, megacity, mittelstand, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shock, patent troll, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, price discrimination, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, remote working, rent-seeking, replication crisis, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skeuomorphism, social distancing, superstar cities, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, urban planning, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, work culture , X Prize, Y2K

It also has its more bombastic version, in the form of what Lorenzo Castellani and Rowland Manthorpe call technopopulism.17 Castellani coined the term to describe an unusual aspect of Italy’s Five Star Movement: in Rome and other places, he saw populist politicians such as Virginia Raggi surrounding themselves not with like-minded Jacobins but rather with “functionaries, magistrates, academics, and other professionals, the likes of whom you would never see at a Five Star meet-up.” British readers will recognise something similar in the way that the Brexit referendum and British prime minister Boris Johnson’s 2019 election victory have led to a rather technocratic-sounding drive to reform the civil service, to greatly increase public R&D investment, and to reform research funding bodies. These initiatives are backed by Dominic Cummings, who served as chief adviser to Boris Johnson and was associated both with the populist Vote Leave campaign and with a technocratic, technophilic desire to reform British institutions. (His WhatsApp description is “Get Brexit done, then ARPA.”)

Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen by Peter Apps

banking crisis, Boris Johnson, call centre, COVID-19, forensic accounting, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, the built environment, University of East Anglia, value engineering

Pointing out that call-outs to fires had reduced 40% in the last decade while spending had remained consistent, he said £200m in ‘savings’ could be found by fire authorities through the implementation of ‘efficiencies’.9 This meant cuts – primarily to staff. According to the National Audit Office, by 2017, fire authorities had lost a quarter of their staff. In 2010, they had 41,632 full-time equivalent employees. By 2017 the number was down to 32,761.10 These cuts were implemented in London by the mayor at the time: Boris Johnson. He pushed them through despite their rejection by the LFB’s governing body. In the eight years he was mayor of London, the brigade experienced cuts totalling £100m. It cut 552 firefighters, 27 fire engines and closed 10 fire stations. Crucially, the cut to jobs particularly affected support staff – with 324 posts removed, 29% of the total.11 Senior officers’ roles were also cut – giving the London Fire Brigade a much thinner ratio of support staff and senior officers to frontline firefighters compared to other forces.

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., ‘Facing the future’, May 2013. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/facing-the-future 10 National Audit Office, ‘Impact of funding reductions on fire and rescue services’, November 2018. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/impact-of-funding-reductions-on-fire-and-rescue-services/ 11 Hansard, 30 October 2019. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-10-30/debates/97A7B2AB-DD4E-427D-BBBF-431A1B8E7017/GrenfellTowerInquiry 12 BBC News, ‘Mayor Boris Johnson tells opponent to get stuffed’, 11 September 2013. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-24050870 Chapter 19 1 Inquiry transcript, 13 April 2022. 2 Inquiry transcript, 25 April 2022. 3 Inquiry transcript, 13 April 2022. 4 Ibid. 5 Inquiry transcript, 26 April 2022. 6 Inquiry transcript, 10 April 2022. 7 Inquiry transcript, 10 April 2022. 8 Interview with author.

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

Global pandemic, global radicalisation The levels of oddness and denial among those who come to regularly stage anti-lockdown or anti-vaccine protests can be truly surreal, with an often-familiar cast of characters with tenuous connections to the corridors of power who can then allude to familiarity with the workings of the state to online and offline followers. One such figure in the UK is Jennifer Arcuri, who had an affair with prime minister Boris Johnson, and also received public money for her business during that time. During the pandemic, Arcuri appeared to suggest that Johnson’s new wife, Carrie Johnson, was a Satanist, alongside others in government. Her feed suggested that vaccines were a ‘genocidal initiative’ and accused people promoting jabs as ‘paid for shills’.70 This is hardly a problem unique to the Conservative party.

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Andrew Romano, ‘New Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows coronavirus conspiracy theories spreading on the right may hamper vaccine efforts’, https://news.yahoo.com, 22 May 2020. 68. Kathy Frankovic, ‘Why won’t Americans get vaccinated?’, https://today.yougov.com, 15 July 2021. 69. ‘Religious Identities and the Race Against the Virus: (Wave 2: June 2021)’, www.prri.org, 27 July 2021. 70. Simon Childs, ‘Boris Johnson’s “Ex-Lover” Has Gone Down a QAnon-Inspired Rabbit Hole’, www.vice.com, 21 December 2021. 71. ‘Anti-vax protesters shouting false Savile slurs target Keir Starmer – video’, www.theguardian.com, 7 February 2022. 72. Ibid. 73. Rob Price, ‘Gaia was a wildly popular yoga brand. Now it’s a publicly traded Netflix rival pushing conspiracy theories while employees fear the CEO is invading their dreams.’, www.businessinsider.com, 14 February 2021. 74.

Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now by Alan Rusbridger

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Andy Carvin, banking crisis, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, country house hotel, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, David Brooks, death of newspapers, Donald Trump, Doomsday Book, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, folksonomy, forensic accounting, Frank Gehry, future of journalism, G4S, high net worth, information security, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Large Hadron Collider, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, natural language processing, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, post-truth, pre–internet, ransomware, recommendation engine, Ruby on Rails, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

This is a revolution; we’ve got truth and justice on our side; we owe the enemy nothing – and we really shouldn’t count our job done till we’ve crushed them, seen them driven before us and heard the lamentations of their women.’31 How can we put this kindly? Delingpole writes entertainingly enough in a sub-Boris Johnson sort of way but when it comes to climate change he’s about as authoritative as a carpet slipper. And yet he was regularly given space by mainstream newspapers and magazines to spout dangerous nonsense – let’s call it fake news – about something people who do know what they’re talking about consider to be a devastating threat to our species.

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But the same Brexit-boosting newspapers were – according to the European Commission itself 21 – the leaders in perpetrating myths about how the EU would destroy British sovereignty: bananas will have to be straight; cows will have to wear nappies; milk jugs will be banned; Bombay mix will be renamed; women will have to hand back old sex toys, and so on. One of the reporters who delighted in this style of reporting was Boris Johnson, the Telegraph’s man in Brussels in the early 1990s. One of his former colleagues, Jean Quatremer, wrote of his technique: ‘Johnson managed to invent an entire newspaper genre: the Euromyth, a story that had a tiny element of truth at the outset but which was magnified so far beyond reality that by the time it reached the reader it was false.’22 Johnson became one of the leading architects of Brexit and, later, British foreign secretary.

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I asked Ian Dunt, the (pro-Remain) editor of Politics.co.uk why more news organisations had not gone for a more balanced, factual, approach. ‘Oh we tried that,’ he said, ‘and literally almost no one read it. They don’t read about fishing quotas or aviation tariffs, however vital they are. But if you write about Boris Johnson, everyone will read it.’ 29. Gillmor, D. We the Media; see Bibliography 30. Archived at https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/07/ 31. Sun, 31 October 2017 32. Twitter, 31 October 2017, 3.15 p.m.; @BarristerSecret 33. Daily Mail, 15 December 2017; Larisa Brown 34. Twitter, 14 December 2017, 11.55 p.m.; @AdamWagner1 35.

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? by David G. Blanchflower

90 percent rule, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Clapham omnibus, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, driverless car, estate planning, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nate Silver, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, p-value, Panamax, pension reform, Phillips curve, plutocrats, post-materialism, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, quantitative easing, rent control, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, urban planning, working poor, working-age population, yield curve

If I’m forced to go out because we don’t have the right deal, then we have to close plants here in the UK and it will be very, very sad.” 17 Votes have consequences. CNN Money has a “Brexit Jobs Tracker” that identifies companies moving jobs or investment from the UK because of Brexit.18 As of November 12, 2018, there were twenty-five on the list. After being praised by Boris Johnson for moving to London five years earlier, Japanese pharmaceutical firm Shionogi announced in March 2019 that it was moving its headquarters to Amsterdam. According to the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, in January 2019 more than 250 companies were in discussions about Brexitdriven relocations.19 The Literature on Walking About and Not Sniffing the Wine Orley Ashenfelter from Princeton University is another believer.

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My cabbie pointed out something unusual about the shoppers that year: they had no bags and were only window shopping. People didn’t have any money to spend. I spoke to other London taxi drivers during the first half of 2008. London cabbies, I find, are always a good source of information on what is happening in London. At first, they were big supporters of the new mayor of London, Boris Johnson, but then they quickly turned against him. A number told me that they were having to work more hours to make their money every week. Some of them told me that they were fortunate because they could increase their hours but many of their friends and family weren’t as lucky. Hours of work were falling, and people were being laid off.

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It also turned out that the probability of being killed by a refugee terrorist was less than that of being killed by a shark, an asteroid, an earthquake, or a tornado; choking on food; or being stung by hornets, wasps, or bees.24 Brexit meant bringing back prosperity to declining coal, steel, and seaside towns. Boris Johnson, who became UK foreign secretary and recently resigned over Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan, complained about EU laws that determined the power of vacuum cleaners and what shape bananas had to be; he said such policies were “crazy.” 25 Sovereignty meant that you could have any shape banana you want.

Are Trams Socialist?: Why Britain Has No Transport Policy by Christian Wolmar

active transport: walking or cycling, Beeching cuts, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, BRICs, congestion charging, Crossrail, Diane Coyle, driverless car, financial independence, full employment, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Network effects, railway mania, trade route, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, wikimedia commons, Zipcar

A series of announcements ensued, usually made by David Cameron wearing a cycling helmet, but while there has been support for the occasional project, the government crucially has no budget line solely dedicated to expenditure on cycling While a few towns with a tradition of cycling, such as Cambridge, York and Chelmsford, have experienced continued growth, the one city to benefit from considerable cycling investment has been London, where a massive increase in cycle use, stimulated from the grass roots largely by young people commuting to the central zone, has almost forced local politicians to respond. On some city centre streets, cyclists became the dominant users in rush hour. A few boroughs responded by installing cycle routes but many of these were inadequate or took users on a circuitous route. There was, however, a breakthrough in 2012, when the mayor, Boris Johnson, promised to spend £913 million over the next nine years on cycling. Although on examination some of this money was wishful thinking and there was considerable initial underspending on the allocation, it did represent a statement of intent and a genuine step change on previous policies. After his first election victory in 2008, Johnson had embarked on an ill-thought-out programme of cycling superhighways that proved to be expensive and poorly designed, which was highlighted by a series of deaths on the main route in east London.

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams

3D printing, additive manufacturing, air freight, algorithmic trading, anti-work, antiwork, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, basic income, battle of ideas, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deep learning, deindustrialization, deskilling, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, housing crisis, housing justice, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, intermodal, Internet Archive, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, liberation theology, Live Aid, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Bookchin, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Overton Window, patent troll, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Slavoj Žižek, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, surplus humans, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wages for housework, warehouse automation, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

The emergence of self-driving vehicles, for instance, will rapidly diminish the points of leverage contained within transportation systems. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers in the UK will have to face this problem directly in the near future, with self-driving trains already in operation and further expansion planned. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has explicitly stated that automation should be used to destroy one of the few remaining militant British unions.78 Crucially, however, leverage points remain, and new ones will emerge in the wake of restructuring and automation. For instance, as one author pointed out – in 1957! – ‘a strike by a very small number of workers is liable to hold up an entire automated factory’.79 A decline in the number of workers overseeing a process also means a concentration of potential power within a smaller group of individuals.

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Erik Olin Wright, ‘Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise’, American Journal of Sociology 105: 4 (2000), p. 962. 73.Jonathan Cutler and Stanley Aronowitz, ‘Quitting Time’, in Stanley Aronowitz and Jonathan Cutler, eds, Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 9–11. 74.Cynthia Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (London: Pluto, 1991). 75.McAlevey, Raising Expectations, p. 28. 76.Cutler and Aronowitz, ‘Quitting Time’, p. 17. 77.Ibid., pp. 12–13; Noam Chomsky, Occupy (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 34. 78.Murray Wardrop, ‘Boris Johnson Pledges to Introduce Driverless Tube Trains Within Two Years’, Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2012. 79.Paul Einzig, The Economic Consequences of Automation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1957), p. 235. 80.David Autor, Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth, Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2014, at nber.org, p. 26. 81.Anh Nguyen, Jason Yosinski and Jeff Clune, ‘Deep Neural Networks Are Easily Fooled: High Confidence Predictions for Unrecognizable Images’, arXiv, 2015, at arxiv.org. 82.A classic resource here is Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements.

Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin

bank run, Boris Johnson, congestion charging, Crossrail, death from overwork, garden city movement, gentrification, Large Hadron Collider, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, plutocrats, Stephen Fry, traveling salesman, V2 rocket

From 1910, to drum up custom, the Metropolitan would operate a luxury Pullman service from Verney Junction to Aldgate. In other words, they attached to the train two special coaches (called Mayflower and Galatea), which exceeded in plushness the Metropolitan’s ordinary first-class compartments. They were essentially restaurants on wheels. There was also a bar in the carriage. When he became mayor of London, Boris Johnson banned drinking on the Underground, but what would he make of City gents being served whisky and water in crystal glasses in the tunnel approaching Baker Street? ‘The scheme of decoration of the cars is that of the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, with remarkably artistic effect’, observed the Railway Magazine in 1910.

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For Livingstone, transport is all about the social good – and the aggrandisation of Ken Livingstone, of course. (So he would phase out the beautiful Routemaster bus in favour of the sinister but supposedly more user-friendly ‘Bendy Bus’ in 2005, which may in turn have been a factor in his defeat by Boris Johnson in the mayoral election of 2008. Johnson is a transport romantic, albeit with a romanticism not confined to public transport – the last time I looked, he was the motoring correspondent of GQ magazine – and he has commissioned a new Routemaster for the twenty-first century. But he is not steeped in transport, as Livingstone is.)

War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Cambridge Analytica, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Etonian, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, illegal immigration, Joseph Schumpeter, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, mass immigration, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, public intellectual, Saturday Night Live, school choice, side project, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks

They included the former emir of Qatar and, of equal note, a wealthy, well-known rabble-rouser—a half-Iranian Iranian nationalist from the UK named Darius Guppy. Guppy, like Michael Bagley, had been caught in elaborate illegal schemes to raise money for unclear purposes, and had once conspired with his friend and fellow Old Etonian British prime minister Boris Johnson to have a journalist physically beaten. Those were the connections that had so worried the anti-fascist activist who had helped me investigate this Londoner, for the information outlined the possibility that Jason had been contacted by someone with channels to power. His and Bagley’s circle of contacts also included the CEO of a media company who moved between Mexico and London and who published a website tracking oil prices and trading—that’s probably where the Venezuela documents (for yet another money raising scheme) came from.

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Chapter 21: The Reckoning “Bagley has never gotten past the discussion phase”: This information is based on publicly available court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia, Alexandria division. Case number 1:19mj315. physically beaten: Simon Murphy, “‘A Couple of Black Eyes’: Johnson and the Plot to Attack a Reporter,” Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/14/black-eyes-boris-johnson-plot-attack-reporter-darius-guppy. Index Affordable Care Act, 118 Ali-Shah, Omar and Idries, 134–35 alt-right movement AltRight Corporation and, 208–12, 213–23, 241–46, 266 (see also Jorjani, Jason Reza) Breitbart and, 241, 304n funding for, 217–20, 241–46 Unite the Right (Charlottesville) rally, 235–47 white nationalism of, 215–23 Andrade de Souza, Roxane, 134, 139, 177, 251–57 Antifa, 239 anti-Semitism.

Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere by Christian Wolmar

Airbnb, autonomous vehicles, Beeching cuts, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, BRICs, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, connected car, deskilling, Diane Coyle, don't be evil, driverless car, Elon Musk, gigafactory, high net worth, independent contractor, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, technological determinism, Tesla Model S, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, Zipcar

The examples I have cited about people standing in front of vehicles would clearly need punitive legislation to prevent obstruction of vehicles. The Holborn problem might require huge stretches of fencing on city streets to prevent jaywalking, which is hugely damaging to the urban realm as it encourages speeding and makes walking far more difficult. That is why Boris Johnson took down miles of fencing across London when he was mayor. In other words, autonomous cars might be the 106 Who will drive the Queen? catalyst for all kinds of restrictions, rather than a force for freedom. They could be the excuse to pen in pedestrians, restrict cyclists, prioritize autonomous vehicles over conventional ones, and turn cities into driverless rat-runs.

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, first-past-the-post, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, information retrieval, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, investor state dispute settlement, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, megaproject, mini-job, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Kinnock, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, openstreetmap, patent troll, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, remote working, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, structural adjustment programs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

At the centre of the amphitheatre, a fountain is planned, which will take the form of Malaysia’s national flower.19 London is being turned into part of the global rentier economy, losing its distinctive character and shrinking the spaces that ordinary Londoners can use freely. Privatisation of the urban commons now has an informal acronym, POPS (privately owned public spaces), to signify the growing number of squares, gardens and parks that look public but are not. In 2009, Boris Johnson, then London’s mayor, bemoaned the ‘corporatisation’ of streets and public spaces that made Londoners feel like trespassers in their own city. Even his headquarters, City Hall, and its thirteen-acre site are owned by More London, an estate management company bought in 2013 by a Kuwaiti property corporation, St Martins, which owns swathes of prime London property.

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Michael Farmer, a hedge fund manager who has given over £6.5 million, was made co-treasurer of the party and given a peerage.21 Even more disquieting is the growing financial role of foreign plutocrats, often with questionable backgrounds. In one small but symbolic example, at the Conservatives 2014 summer fund-raising ball the wife of Putin’s ex-deputy finance minister, Vladimir Chernukhin, successfully bid £160,000 for a tennis match with David Cameron and then London Mayor Boris Johnson, and the auctioneer threw in the party co-chair as ball boy. The Conservative Party has also set up a Leader’s Group of donors who give at least £50,000 a year, enabling an international super-rich group of financiers and industrialists to have regular dinners with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.

A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner by Chris Atkins

Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, collapse of Lehman Brothers, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, forensic accounting, G4S, housing crisis, illegal immigration, index card, Mark Zuckerberg, Milgram experiment, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans

In 2019, there was an 11% rise in assaults, self-inflicted deaths rose from 81 to 86, and there was a staggering increase in self-harm of 24% to an all-time high of 57,968 incidents. The MoJ revealed that one in seven prisons had a performance of ‘serious concern’ – the highest proportion since ratings began.11 Boris Johnson became prime minister in the summer of 2019 and law and order policy took a sharp turn to the right. Robert Buckland QC was appointed Justice Secretary,12 and Priti Patel (who had previously advocated the death penalty) became Home Secretary.13 The government immediately announced its intention to create 10,000 new prison places14 and proposals to increase sentence lengths.15 There were five different Justice Secretaries over my 30-month sentence.

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utm_term=.1b9349c58cd6 20 http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Bromley%20 Briefings/Summer%202018%20factfile.pdf 21 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0834tmt 22 https://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_projects/children_of_prisoners.htm 23 https://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_projects/children_of_prisoners.htm 24 https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/offenders/psipso/psi-2013/PSI-30-2013-incentives-and-earned-privileges.doc 25 http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/ForPrisonersFamilies/PrisonerInformationPages/IncentivesandEarnedPrivileges 26 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/multi-agency-publicprotection-arrangements-mappa--2 27 https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/offenders/psipso/pso/PSO_2205_offender_assessment_and_sentence_management.doc Chapter 7: Spinsters and Spiceheads 1 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449290/glossary-of-programmes.pdf; https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/justice-data-lab-pilot-statistics 2 http://www.equinoxcare.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/JD-Prison-Offender-Resettlement-Workers-NEW.doc 3 https://www.sparkinside.org/our-work/heros-journey 4 http://www.safeground.org.uk/prisons/man-up/ 5 http://www.safeground.org.uk/impact-evidence/full-list-programmeevaluations/ 6 https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/imb-prod-storage-1ocod6bqky0vo/uploads/2017/09/Wandsworth-2016-2017.pdf 7 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2844087/time-added-on-to-prisonerssentences-for-attacking-each-other-more-than-doubles-in-five-years/ 8 https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/offenders/psipso/psi-2011/psi-64-2011-safer-custody.doc 9 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/29/spector.sentencing/index.html Chapter 8: Murder and Mutiny 1 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rioting-inmates-at-winson-greenbirmingham-used-keys-from-warden-to-unlock-cells-589f30k0w 2 https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/winson-greenpriosn-riots-inmates-12332465 3 https://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2017/09/29/hmp-birminghamriots-six-convicted-of-mutiny-after-worst-prison-riot-since-strangeways/ 4 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/12/painstaking-investigation-deutschebank-insidertrading 5 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2463202/riot-breaks-out-at-prison-as-60-inmates-take-control/ 6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-42217789 7 https://www.itv.com/news/story/2013-11-01/18rated-movies-prison-ban/ 8 https://yjlc.uk/age-2/ 9 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/criminals-under-25-shouldnot-go-to-adult-prison-mps-commons-justice-select-committee-a7379811.html Chapter 9: Courtrooms and Cheeseburgers 1 https://www.imb.org.uk/independent-monitoring-boards/ 2 https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2016/09/07/prison-reformlooks-dead-in-the-water-under-liz-truss 3 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392885/Prisoner-allowed-fatherchild-jail-human-right-family-life.html 4 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2057116/prisonofficer-found-guilty-ofmisconduct-after-collecting-lags-sperm-in-syringe-in-plan-to-conceivechocolate-baby/ 5 https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/career-paedophile-roy-reynoldssentenced-to-16-months-in-jail-1-4844055 6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38586271 7 https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/750588/paedophile-sex-childrenconvicted-jail-spare-free-judge-sick-Daniel-Taylor 8 https://www.imb.org.uk/report/wandsworth-2017-18-annual-report/ 9 http://www.transformjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/TJ_March2018report.pdf 10 http://www.ppo.gov.uk/app/uploads/2014/07/Risk_thematic_final_web.pdf 11 https://www.itv.com/news/2015-07-21/hunt-for-inmate-mistakenly-freedfrom-wandsworth-prison/ 12 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5178663/The-number-prisonerswrongly-released-jail-10.html 13 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3947584/Prisoners-cushy-life-Ministers-want-jail-softer.html 14 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2987950/hmp-berwyn-wrexham-uk-cellscost/ 15 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/exposed-prisoners-partying-drugsvodka-11305994 16 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205824/Ill-stop-jails-like-holidaycamps-says-new-minister-justice.html 17 https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/nick-ferrari-sort-outholiday-camp-prisons/ 18 https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jun/15/reading-for-freedomlife-changing-scheme-dreamt-up-by-prison-pen-pals-shannon-trust-actionfor-equity-award 19 https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/cjji/media/press-releases/2015/03/learningdisbailitiespt2news/ 20 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/05/jail-reading-scheme-lettertom-shannontrust 21 https://www.shannontrust.org.uk/support-us/ Chapter 10: Despair and Dancing Queen 1 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/400/400.pdf 2 https://twitter.com/MoJGovUK/status/733345232117436416 3 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/26/prison-suicides-inengland-and-wales-reaches-record-high 4 http://www.swlondoner.co.uk/revealed-wandsworth-prisons-tragic-suiciderates-highest-country/ 5 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4183510/HBOS-banker-jailed-11-years-1bn-fraud.html 6 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2786265/hbos-rotters-used-posh-yacht-toscam-fortune-during-1bn-asset-stripping-trial/ 7 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/02/hbos-manager-andother-city-financiers-jailed-over-245m-loans-scam 8 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/30/cash-cruises-sex-partieshbos-manager-lynden-scourfield 9 https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answersstatements/written-question/Lords/2017-12-21/HL4432/ 10 http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/justice-committee/prisonreform/oral/44534.html 11 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jail-go-up-like-dynamite-10601487 12 https://hansard.parliament.uk/pdf/Commons/2017-01-25 13 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-04417-001 14 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/08/im-blame-blunkettsindefinite-prison-sentences-and-thousands-still-locked 15 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/14/liz-truss-get-grip-backlogprisoners-held-beyond-interdeminate-sentence-ipp 16 http://www.ppo.gov.uk/app/uploads/2014/07/Risk_thematic_final_web.pdf 17 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26561380 18 https://inews.co.uk/news/worboys-forensic-psychologist-horrified-lackevidence-behind-prisonsex-offender-courses/ 19 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48683296 20 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4635876/Scandal-100million-sexcrime-cure-hubs.html 21 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-mindfulness-makes-criminals-worse-3sd6xf5fh 22 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38931580 23 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hnpml 24 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5674345/Female-prison-officer-25-started-personal-relationship-prisoner.html 25 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3865078/Prison-guard-inmate-said-pretty-smuggled-phones-jail-send-sex-texts-murderer-infatuated-him.html 26 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2900379/prison-crackdown-will-includetough-but-fair-agenda-to-prevent-lags-reoffending/ 27 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tczmv 28 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43115364 29 https://www.doingtime.co.uk/how-prisons-work/the-first-weeks-in-custody/personal-officer/ 30 https://www.ft.com/content/eb01cd18-4f63-11e7-bfb8-997009366969 31 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4246586/Police-hunt-murderer-twoarmed-men-help-escape.html 32 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/prisoners-being-left-insqualid-courtroom-cells-by-private-escort-companies-and-told-they-haveonly-a6723336.html 33 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-48747398 34 https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/law-and-rights/prison-leavers/ 35 https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/social_exclusion_task_force/assets/publications_1997_to_2006/reducing_summary.pdf 36 http://bouncebackproject.com 37 http://www.cellspitch.com 38 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2900379/prison-crackdown-will-includetough-but-fair-agenda-to-prevent-lags-reoffending/ Chapter 11: Paedophiles and Prizes 1 https://www.mdx.ac.uk/our-research/researchgroups/prisons-researchgroup/learning-together 2 https://www.judiciary.uk/announcements/coa-news-release-crim-appealsheard-more-quickly-11122012/ 3 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/29/hmp-wandsworth-ianbickers-governor-leaves-prisoners 4 https://www.gov.uk/life-in-prison/healthcare-in-prison 5 https://www.imb.org.uk/report/wandsworth-imb-2016-17-annual-report/ 6 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/22/prison-healthcare-so-badit-would-be-shut-down-on-outside-say-doctors 7 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/05/healthcare-jailskilling-female-prisoners-black-women-annabella-landsberg 8 https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/mentalhealth/cqc-prosecutes-mentalhealth-trust-over-prisoner-suicide/7029362.article 9 http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/offenders/psipso/psi-2011/psi-49-2011-prisoner-comms-services.doc Epilogue 1 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/04/hmp-wandsworth-losesreform-prison-status-ian-bickers 2 https://www.ft.com/content/eb01cd18-4f63-11e7-bfb8-997009366969 3 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prisonreform-open-letter-fromthe-justice-secretary 4 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prison-violenceself-injury-uk-highest-level-record-inmates-figures-hmp-liverpoolnottingham-a8177286.html 5 https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/secretary-of-state-for-justice 6 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/justice-secretary-david-gauke-sets-outlong-term-for-justice 7 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/06/26/scrap-jail-terms-less-12-months-serious-offences-says-prisons/ 8 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fairer-prisoner-incentives-toencourage-rehabilitation 9 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/19/liverpool-prison-worst-conditions-inspectors-report 10 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45214414 11 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49110327 12 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/07/cabinet-audit-whatdoes-appointment-robert-buckland-justice-secretary-mean 13 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/07/cabinet-audit-whatdoes-appointment-priti-patel-home-secretary-mean-policy 14 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49309112 15 https://www.channel4.com/news/boris-johnson-pledges-to-increase-prisonsentences-for-violent-and-sexual-crimes 16 https://tpa.typepad.com/home/files/the_failure_of_the_prison_service_in_the_uk.pdf 17 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/01/grayling-reaches-33msettlement-over-brexit-ferry-fiasco-court-case-eurotunnel 18 https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ianbickers-a4515625 19 https://twitter.com/ian_bickers/status/1033990834881011712?

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, global supply chain, helicopter parent, High speed trading, immigration reform, income inequality, Khan Academy, laissez-faire capitalism, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler