Comment
Ben Delo: doing us a good turn?
Reform’s mega-donors have done Britain a favour
There is a “huge whiff of hypocrisy” in other political parties complaining about the recent largesse of Reform UK’s crypto billionaire donors, says Robert Shrimsley in the FT. Lord Sainsbury gave many millions to the Labour Party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and was made science minister (a role in which he was, admittedly, “widely praised”). He later gave £10m to the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives have for many years enjoyed “seven- and eight-figure donations” from individuals. And, of course, Labour was founded as the political wing of the trade union movement, from which it receives “vast sums” on the explicit promise of enacting legislation that is beneficial to... the unions. Whatever one thinks of Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, their donations are nothing new.
The two mega-donors may also have done the country a “good turn”, says The Economist. The problem with British politics is not that it has too much money, but too little. Last year, the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon received more in donations than every major political party combined. (Evidently “British voters prefer the asses in Devon to the asses in Westminster”.) So did the Royal Opera House. It’s repeatedly been shown that “cash cannot simply buy victory” in elections. But a lack of funds does mean impoverished opposition parties are unable to prepare for power. Most shadow ministers – who hope one day to spend from a budget worth well over a trillion pounds – can afford maybe two or three staffers to put together a programme for government. And for as long as political giving is seen as inherently corrupt or “spivvy”, only spivs will give. Those who dislike Reform should copy Delo and Harborne and put their money where their mouth is.
🏦🤨 If you are really worried about cash corrupting democracy, says Michael Gove in The Spectator, “and I am”, then attention is better directed at the “lobbying, lunching and crony corporatism” of major City players; giant incumbents in housebuilding, defence and energy; and outsourcing giants like Serco and Capita. There are “daily conspiracies against the public interest” hatched in boardrooms and accepted quietly by “supine or compromised” government departments. Harborne and Delo, by contrast, hand over their cash in the “full glare of publicity”.
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Heroes and villains
Lily Collins in Emily in Paris: “the Shakespeare of our time”
Hero
Emily in Paris, according to JD Vance, who says the gentle Netflix comedy is a “masterpiece” that ranks as “the Shakespeare of our time”. The US vice president explained in a social media video that his “meta-analysis” of the “genius” series is that beneath all the fluff it is really a “massive cultural criticism of millennial decision-making”, specifically their inability to settle down with the right partner. Not everyone agrees. The Times reviewer wrote of the fifth series: “I have bought three-ply loo roll with more depth.”
Villain
A man in New Hampshire who allegedly stole a fire engine that was responding to a blaze burning down his own house. Police say Nestor Roman II, 30, hopped into a Ford F-550 rescue truck, hit another fire engine and pickup truck, ran over multiple water supply lines and then crashed into another property, where, for good measure, he tried to steal several items from the porch. Fire officials said the accused’s house was, unsurprisingly, a “total loss”.
Instagram/@grandmajoysroadtrip
Hero
A 96-year-old widow from Ohio who got her first passport five years ago and is about to visit her seventh continent. Joy Ryan had never even seen a mountain when she began travelling with her grandson, Brad, when he was suffering from depression in 2015. They went on to visit every one of America’s 63 National Parks, before branching out with trips to destinations including Kenya, the Galápagos Islands and Antarctica. She says she has a secret weapon when Brad’s deep and meaningful conversations become too much: she turns off her hearing aid.
Villain
A tiny snail that is hampering Ireland’s diplomatic efforts. The Irish government has been at pains to avoid antagonising Donald Trump because its economy is reliant on taxes from US multinationals. But proposals to build a wall and a “spectacular” ballroom at Doonbeg, the US president’s golf course on Ireland’s south-west coast, are being thwarted over fears they would impact the delicate dune habitat of the 2mm-long Vertigo angustior, known as the narrow-mouthed whorl snail.
Comment
Migrants trying to leave France and cross the English Channel. Dan Kitwood/Getty
Time to get tough with the Kurdish mafia
We in Britain have a strange habit of talking about “small boats” as though they’re some kind of natural phenomenon, says Ben Judah in The Sunday Times. In fact, they are a criminal phenomenon: the product of a massive smuggling operation that is largely controlled by organised crime gangs with deep connections and political ties to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. These Kurdish mafias, which “operate and advertise in broad daylight in their homeland”, have achieved almost complete control of the 2,500-mile smuggling route that runs over the Zagros mountains into Turkey, then on through the European Union as far as Calais and across the Channel to Britain. What few realise is that we have a history with Iraqi Kurdistan that gives us leverage to stem the flow of mega-dinghies – “we just need to use it”.
The Kurds are the world’s largest “nation without a state”, occupying a huge mountainous region that encompasses parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. Since the first Gulf war, when American, British and French troops liberated them from Saddam Hussein and imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq in 1991, the Kurds have enjoyed a Western security umbrella that has kept them free of Arab rule. On counter-terrorism, they are trusty allies with deep intelligence links to Western agencies. But smuggling, which began as a means of survival and resistance against Saddam’s reign of terror, has become a way of life. There’s an old joke: “Where there’s a Kurd, there’s a way.” But when it comes to smuggling weapons, people and drugs across borders, the joke is wearing thin. Rishi Sunak deserves credit for smashing the Albanian smuggling gangs. Now it’s time for our friends in Kurdistan to “feel the heat”.
The Knowledge Crossword
Life
Beard in 1981. Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty
The party animal who climbed Kilimanjaro on acid
Peter Beard was a “Renaissance man in a safari jacket”, says Jeanne Malle in Air Mail: an artist, actor and heir to tobacco and railroad fortunes. He held court for decades from his compound in the Hamptons and was an “unstoppable party animal” for whom day and night were interchangeable. Thrice married, he was also an “incorrigible ladies’ man” who once climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on acid with a mistress while his wife waited at home. But Beard, who died in 2020 aged 82, was best known as an explorer and photographer. He first travelled to Africa aged 17, assisting Quentin Keynes, the adventurer great-grandson of Charles Darwin, on a film about wildlife. He was so struck by what he found there that he returned during his final year at Yale, having persuaded the university to let him mail diary entries back from Kenya in place of a conventional thesis.
In the 1960s, Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta granted Beard special permission to buy a ranch near a giraffe sanctuary outside Nairobi on the condition that he would document the country’s natural beauty and promote it to the outside world. And he did, photographing local communities and the flora and fauna of Tsavo National Park, and in 1965 he published his celebrated first book, The End of the Game. A second edition, published 12 years later, pulsed with “fury and fascination”: filled with haunting images of landscapes strewn with thousands of carcasses of elephants, rhinos and hippos that had died from starvation, disease and overcrowding as conservation efforts had crunched too much life into new national parks. According to his biographer, Beard’s life was a “phenomenal expression of entitlement, ambition, fame, flamboyance, vanity, and creativity”.
The End of the Game has been re-issued by Taschen. To buy, click here.
Weather
Quoted
“Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.”
Oscar Wilde
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