Comment
Margate: by no means “paved with gold”. Peter Titmuss/Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty
Andy Burnham’s mythological Britain
Visiting Margate this week, says Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph, I felt a “world away” from Andy Burnham’s “mythological Britain”, where gritty, left-behind northerners need rescuing from the rapacious, comfortable south. England’s southern coast is home to some of the most deprived areas in the country – struggling seaside towns, isolated villages – and they can’t stand Burnham’s “pro-northern posturing”. The owner of a gym in Broadstairs told me bitterly about his sister’s swish flat in Manchester; workers at an anti-poverty charity that helps skint single mothers buy school uniforms just laughed. “There is an attitude not only that the south is paved with gold,” they told me, “but whatever southerners have is wrongly acquired either by fraud or accident of birth.”
Burnham needs to re-read “one of the most influential documents in Labour history”, says Sebastian Payne in The Times. Southern Discomfort, written for the Fabian Society by North Durham MP Giles Radice after John Major’s shock 1992 election win, stressed how much Labour had to change to remain electorally relevant. Thatcherism, Radice said, had fundamentally changed the aspirations and attitudes of society, and Labour had failed to keep up. Specifically, he said, “Labour suffers from a crippling weakness in Southern England”. His prescription was strong stuff – Labour had to embrace aspiration, prove it could handle capitalism, and accept individual freedom over traditional class-based antagonisms. Burnham risks taking the party back its old comfort zone – the only way to fund the tens of billions of pounds worth of new spending commitments he’s mooted this week (without trashing Labour’s fiscal rules) would be taxes that disproportionately hit the south. That’s all very well for Burnham’s mates, but all those southern Labour MPs who smoothed his path to No 10 are in for a “nasty shock”.
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Property
SNOWDON’S HOUSE This 15th-century home in West Sussex was given to Lord Snowdon just before he married Princess Margaret in 1960, says Sophia Money-Coutts on Substack. On the ground floor are a large kitchen and dining room, with a separate pantry, as well as a utility, two reception rooms and a large hall. The downstairs loo is still covered in newspaper clippings and photos stuck up by Snowdon himself. Six bedrooms, two of which are ensuite, are spread over the top two floors, and the 5.5 acres of grounds include a heated pool and pool house, a two-bedroom annexe and various other outbuildings. Haywards Heath is a 12-minute drive, with trains to London in 45 minutes. £3.95m. Click on the image to see the listing.
Heroes and villains
Villain
A woman who swore at Nigel Farage as she was driving past, and received a swift dose of cosmic justice. Seeing the Reform UK leader, the unidentified motorist rolled down her window and shouted “w***er”, but was so distracted that she failed to notice the car in front of her stopping at a red light, and crashed into it. As Farage said later on social media: “That’s what you might call instant karma.”
Hero
FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, at least according to Donald Trump, who says he wants the Swiss football bigwig – who has been the subject of multiple criminal investigations – to be the next UN secretary-general. Infantino is “respected by everyone around the world”, says the US president, and has a “special ability to bring people together”. The admiration is mutual – in December, after Trump failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Infantino handed him the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize” instead.
Villain
US golfer Bryson DeChambeau, who was handed a two-shot penalty at last weekend’s Open Championship at Royal Birkdale for improving the line of his swing by treading down the long grass around his ball. The big hitter threw a giant strop, demanding he be driven back to the spot to remonstrate with course officials and, finally, threatened to call US President Donald Trump to have the penalty overturned. Former Open champion Rory McIlroy said the tantrum was “not a good look”.
Hero
Minnesota granny-of-five Anita LeBrun, who was so appalled at her care home’s no booze policy that she took it all the way to the statehouse. The 82-year-old, who was told she could not host happy hour because her assisted living facility lacked a liquor licence, decided to become the face of a mission to change the law. After testifying twice before the state legislature, she succeeded, and this week shared a toast with Governor Tim Walz at a ceremonial signing of what’s become known as the “Grandparents’ Happy Hour” bill.
On the money
Trump in his New York office in 1987. Joe McNally/Getty
The Rich List: a scorecard for elite egos
When Philip Beresford was a young City reporter at The Sunday Telegraph, says Clara Murray in the FT, he telephoned the Duke of Devonshire as part of his research for the paper’s first ever list of “Britain’s richest people”. A butler passed the phone to the duke, and Beresford politely asked if he was correct in thinking that His Grace’s wealth ran to £500mn. “The Sunday Telegraph is doing this?” the Duke bellowed. “It sounds like Bolshevism!” The project was quickly shelved, and only came back to life after Beresford moved to The Sunday Times several years later where the concept became an instant triumph. “Circulation soared 18%,” Beresford recalls. “It blew all their minds.”
The now ubiquitous lists have, in some cases, become a “scorecard for elite egos”. Back when he was a young property mogul, Donald Trump spent years “lobbying” to improve his ranking, including lying about the size of his New York penthouse and using his alter ego, PR agent “John Barron”, to convince reporters that he earned $50m a year from his Atlantic City casino. One pair of siblings sent Forbes a bank statement showing a transfer from one to the other, pushing the recipient’s assets over the “billionaire” threshold. And Robert Watts, who now compiles The Sunday Times list, recalls a time when members at a private club in London would jokingly address one another by their ranking. “Hello, 347. How are you?” “I’m very well, 425, you’ve not had a very good year, have you?” For others, their inclusion comes as a shock. After Noel Gallagher entered the list this year following Oasis’s reunion tour, he said he planned to phone his accountant pronto, “because I know for a fact I haven’t got that much money”.
The Knowledge Crossword
Staying young
Sienna Miller sensibly enjoying a cup of coffee. Mike Pont/WireImage/Getty
Our obsession with health is making us miserable
Earlier this week, says Lara Brown in The Telegraph, the American Heart Association said that five coffees a day could reduce the risk of various cardiovascular diseases. “What great news.” So long as you don’t believe the other studies showing that caffeine increases your blood pressure, or that it’s inflammatory or only safe to drink in the morning. That’s the trouble with today’s “health-obsessed” culture: it’s impossible to know what to believe. Eggs, which for years were out of favour for fear of cholesterol, are now a “nutritional godsend”. Wine is an absolute no-no, but also might prevent cancer. And chocolate is a superfood, provided it’s organic, 85% cocoa, and you only have one square.
It’s resulted in we Gen Zers becoming the most “health-optimised” generation ever, drinking less than our parents, tracking heart rates and sleep, and swerving ice cream. There’s now a high-protein Babybel and Mars bar, while 0% beers are booming. But is that really how we should be living our lives? Packing the same macro-counted meals into Tupperware each day in a hollow attempt to achieve “health maximisation”? The truth is, it’s only making us more miserable. One experiment, which hooked people up to a fake machine for the night then gave them a fictitious sleep score in the morning, showed that those who’d been told they’d slept well aced their cognitive tests while those given a poor rating struggled – essentially proving that not thinking too much about your night’s kip is probably better for you than a day-ruining morning report from your Oura ring. Rather than waiting for “permission from scientists” to enjoy life, I call on my fellow Gen Zs to drink coffee, eat whatever you find delicious and sit in the sun with a glass of wine.
Weather
Quoted
“Every film about war ends up being pro-war.”
François Truffaut
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