Keir Starmer says Britain “simply isn’t working”, as the government unveils what it claims are the “biggest employment reforms in a generation”. The plans will see job centres overhauled and all 18 to 21-year-olds lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to take up jobs or training opportunities, but they fail to address the post-pandemic rise in sickness benefits. Donald Trump has vowed to impose 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada unless they reduce the flow of illegal migrants and drugs into the US. The president-elect also said that if Beijing doesn’t curb exports of fentanyl he would slap an additional 10% tariff on top of whatever levy he puts on Chinese goods. The Savoy hotel is auctioning off much of its furniture and art ahead of a major renovation. More than 3,000 lots are listed, including furniture by Italian designer Francesco Molon and pictures of Winston Churchill, Katharine Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin. All lots started at £5; put your bid in here.

Was wokeness just a fad?

After a revolution, symbols of the old regime are “yanked down with unsentimental haste”, says James Marriott in The Times. And lo, the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has removed the pronouns “she/her” from her profile on X. Last week’s Transgender Day of Remembrance went unmarked by most British institutions for the first time in years. Nothing from the BBC, the Labour Party “or even Stonewall”. Not long ago the Bank of England was floodlit in commemorative pink, white and blue, and vigils were held at universities. This time, the only news from the trans rights battle is that Warner Bros has defended JK Rowling – a position that would quite recently have counted as a “declaration of corporate civil war” with young arts graduates on its staff.

It would be premature to declare the woke movement “over”, but it’s remarkable how quickly passions fade: a sober statistical analysis in The Economist finds that “woke opinions and practices are on the decline”. Those of us who have long objected to the “absurdities and intolerances” of 21st-century political correctness may be tempted to claim an intellectual victory. But walking past the “starkly unilluminated” Bank of England one is forced to wonder: “How much was anyone really invested in this stuff in the first place?” Obviously for a small group of rabid online activists, such battles are “consumingly important”, but it seems likely that most people just nodded along with radical new ideas such as “silence is violence”, “white privilege” and “deplatforming” without really thinking about them. It’s reassuring in a way to know that such apparent fits of ideological passion are so short-lived, but it’s also disturbing. If blatantly illogical ideas can take hold this easily, what’s next?

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