Comment
King Canute demonstrating the limits of his power. Stefano Bianchetti/Getty
King Donald can’t hold back the tide
Donald Trump is the “anti-Canute”, says Gerard Baker in The Times. Contrary to common misconception, the reason the old Danish king got his feet wet was to show his sycophantic courtiers that even monarchs have limited powers. Trump, having seized his improbable second term, set out to prove the opposite: that one man’s will could command the tides of immigration, trade, justice and America’s place in the world. A year on, he is discovering that his powers are not as “elemental” as he thought. The Iran war has delivered tactical military success but no strategic victory. His signature economic policy – sweeping tariffs on America’s trading partners – has been struck down by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Public revulsion over the killing of protesters in Minneapolis has forced him to sack Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, his “circus ringleader”.
These constraints are thickening. Voters in district after district are rejecting MAGA candidates, including in Palm Beach County, home to Mar-a-Lago itself, which Trump won by eight points in 2024. “If you can’t get people in your own backyard to submit to your will, how are you going to reassert your authority over the country, let alone the world?” Influential voices that helped deliver his election victory are turning against him, especially over Iran. None of this means Trump’s efforts are over or inconsequential. Faced with a choice between bowing to political, military, legal and economic restraints or trying to burn them down, he’s unlikely to “take the submissive path”. But to succeed at the whole kingship thing you have to be successful. You have to prove to the people that the unrestrained exercise of your will has materially improved their lives. Otherwise they’ll conclude that life without you “might not be so bad after all”.
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Heroes and villains
The unnamed sailor’s running route on Strava. Le Monde
Villain
A French sailor who gave away the position of France’s aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean by going for a run on the flight deck and logging it on a fitness app. The unnamed officer on the €3bn Charles de Gaulle recorded his 35-minute jog on his smartwatch, which automatically uploaded the details to his public account on Strava.
Villain
Reform’s Matt Goodwin, who has been accused of using AI to write his new book, Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity. The former academic left the ChatGPT URL in some of the few references used to justify his arguments, says Andy Twelves in The Spectator, and much of his analysis appears to refer to “events, places and people which do not exist”.
Villain
King Harold, whose epic efforts to stop William conquering England may not have been as epic as we thought. The Anglo-Saxon king was long thought to have marched his men 200 miles south from Yorkshire, where they had defeated the Norwegians, to take on William in Sussex, in just four days. But a researcher from the University of East Anglia has concluded that it’s more likely Harold transported his forces south by sea – rather undermining the claim that he only lost the Battle of Hastings because his troops were knackered from their heroic march.
Zeitgeist
Where have our public intellectuals gone? Germaine Greer in 1972. Bettmann/Getty
Have today’s elite given up on reading?
A month or so ago, says Sam Leith in The Daily Telegraph, the novelist Sebastian Faulks was at a dinner party with a bunch of well-educated, high-earning 30-something future masters of the universe. But it soon became clear, he told me, that none of them was a reader. One guy thought he might be able to find time for a chapter, but certainly never a whole book. “Picture poor old Faulks floored.” Sadly, there is now evidence to back up this anecdote. A new survey of how class has changed in Britain contains a striking nugget: the new “elite” – younger, more ethnically diverse and more urban than previous elites, and more likely to earn rather than inherit their money – are less likely than any other sector of society to read for pleasure.
Rishi Sunak, a poster-boy for this cohort, hasn’t indicated enjoyment for anything much more challenging than Jilly Cooper. Keir Starmer chose as his book on Desert Island Discs a “detailed atlas”. Compare, forlornly, the past. William Gladstone was a serious scholar of Homer; Benjamin Disraeli was a novelist; Margaret Thatcher “slant-quoted” the playwright Christopher Fry (“the lady’s not for turning”). Churchill scattered quotes from Kipling and Shakespeare, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Witty public intellectuals like Clive James, Germaine Greer and Jonathan Miller used to pop up on telly and discuss the Big Questions. Today, we have a retired Melvyn Bragg and Stephen Fry, “a showbiz idea of a public intellectual”. If our elites shape the wider culture, as they do, they should be aware of what people before them were thinking and feeling. In the words of George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Words he wrote, of course, in a book.
The Knowledge Crossword
What to watch
Noah Wyle in The Pitt
After taking the US by storm last year, the medical drama The Pitt is finally available to stream in the UK, says Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. It’s been worth the wait. Noah Wyle plays the senior doctor in an under-resourced and over-burdened emergency department in Pittsburgh, with each of the 15 episodes covering one hour of a single shift. You get all the usual hospital fare: gory injuries, incompetent interns, incomprehensible medical jargon. But while there are plenty of the “punchy, urgent” scenes you’d expect from the team behind ER, there are also long story arcs that are given space to breathe, so that nothing feels contrived. It makes for addictive and unmissable TV. “Believe the hype.” Fifteen episodes, one hour each.
Weather
Quoted
“Fish, to taste right, must swim at least three times: in water, in butter and in wine.”
Polish proverb
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