End of the Third Party? Third the of End the Extinction: Third Party?

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Special report: the economic impact of the Arab Spring issue 198 | september 2012 september 198 | issue

www.prospect-magazine.co.uk september 2012 | £4.50 $6.99 €6.90 Extinction End of the extinction: the end of the third party? third the of end the extinction: third party?

Britain’s Empire strikes back kwasi kwarteng Mo and me: Olympic idol ismail einashe 9 A$10.95 Israel’s Orthodox danger ISSN 1359-5024 gershom gorenberg 771359

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Excess mileage charges may apply. Rental includesRoad Fund of Licenceforthe duration ( 4.3 ) , combined:23.5 50.00 andoptional metallic paintat£645.00(on-the-road price ( 12.0 ) -55.4 ( litres per 100km ( 5.1 ) . CO 2 emissions: ) 09/08/20120 11:29 forthe 9 /0 8 /2 0 1 2 1 1 : 2 9 prospect september 2012 1 Foreword I agree with Nick 2 Bloomsbury Place, London wc1a 2qa Publishing 020 7255 1281 Editorial 020 7255 1344 Fax 020 7255 1279 Email [email protected] [email protected] Website www.prospect-magazine.co.uk Editorial Editor and chief executive Bronwen Maddox Editor at large David Goodhart Deputy editor James Elwes The polls that YouGov has carried out for Prospect are stark Politics editor James Macintyre Books editor David Wolf (p22). As Peter Kellner writes, if the Liberal Democrats Creative director David Killen Production editor Ollie Cussen faced a general election now, they would have only about 10 Web assistant Akanksha Awal Web intern Annalies Winny MPs, compared to 57 now. The present parliamentary Editorial assistants Nicole Muir, Emily Chan, strength reflects the euphoria of the spring of 2010, when Nick Renaud-Komiya Publishing Britain’s third party seemed to be in striking range of the President & co-founder Derek Coombs other two. Nick Clegg’s performance in the televised debate, Publisher David Hanger Circulation marketing director Jamie Wren which prompted Gordon Brown’s refrain “I agree with Digital marketing: Tim De La Salle Advertising sales director Nick,” and inspired a thousand lapel badges, seemed to have Iain Adams, tel: 020 7255 1934 pulled off a transformation that in politics is priceless—of Advertising sales manager Dan Jefferson, tel: 020 7255 1934 making his party sound like the future, and the others like the past. Advertising sales Chris Anson, tel: 01424 838 855 Now, there are mutterings about whether to ditch Clegg for Vince Cable, quit the Finance manager Pauline Joy coalition, or split the party. They are wrong. Clegg is right, or at least, he has been Editorial advisory board David Cannadine, Clive Cowdery, AC more right than wrong. As David Steel has put it, “because of our commitment to Grayling, Peter Hall, John Kay, Peter Kellner, Nader Mousavizadeh, Toby Mundy, Robin proportional representation, an unwritten attachment to the principle of coalition Niblett, Jean Seaton is in the party’s DNA.” That means compromise. To argue, as Dick Leonard does Associate editors Tom Chatfield, James Crabtree, Andy (p27), that the party, with its centre of gravity on the left, should never have done Davis, Edward Docx, David Edmonds, Sam a deal with the Conservatives is to deny it the influence that it has had, and to Knight, Ian Irvine, Sam Leith, Emran Mian, Elizabeth Pisani, Wendell Steavenson, exaggerate the difference of views inB ritish politics about how to handle the deficit. James Woodall Judged by the changes the Lib Dems have secured in Conservative policy, they Contributing editors Hephzibah Anderson, Philip Ball, Anthony have done far better than the polls would suggest. True, Clegg’s reversal on tuition Dworkin, Josef Joffe, Anatole Kaletsky, Michael Lind, Joy Lo Dico, Erik Tarloff fees was a bad call, a gratuitous rebuff to his supporters. He runs the risk of being Annual subscription rates remembered mainly for the things that have gone wrong. But he can claim solid UK £49; Student £27 Europe £55; Student £32.50 achievements on income tax for poorer people, on pensions, on bank regulation, and Rest of the World £59.50; Student £35 on resisting Conservative impulses to curtail civil liberties. Prospect Subscriptions, 800 Guillat Avenue, Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne, me9 8gu And reform of the House of Lords, where Clegg has been mocked across the Tel 0844 249 0486; 44(0)1795 414 957 Fax 01795 414 555 board? True, again, it failed to resonate. But he is right on the central point. More Email [email protected] than a decade into the 21st century, the present arrangements are an embarrassment Website www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/subscribe Cheques payable to Prospect Publishing for any country which claims a place in the modern world. Britain’s Olympic Ltd. Subscription refunds must be made in writing to Prospect within four weeks of a euphoria (see Mo and Me, p28) sits oddly with a system which awards legislative new order or renewal, and are subject to an power by party patronage and inheritance. administration charge of £15. No refunds are paid on quarterly subscriptions. It is easy in Britain, with its long tradition of democracy, to dismiss those who

The views represented in this magazine are urge an improvement, accusing them of ignoring more urgent problems. But that not necessarily those of Prospect Publishing is too cavalier. Even apparently vigorous democracies can come under threat, old Ltd. Best endeavours have been taken in all cases to represent faithfully the views of all as well as new. That is a theme of Gershom Gorenberg’s report on Israel’s Orthodox contributors and interviewees. The publisher accepts no responsibility for errors, population (p36), as well as of our report on the economic impact of the Arab Spring omissions or the consequences thereof. (p63). Meanwhile, our coverage of China (see “Copycat China,” p44, and Letters, Newstrade distribution Comag Specialist, Tavistock Road, p11) is infused with warnings of the limit that political failings put on its future. West Drayton, ub7 7qe, Tel: 01895 433716 The Olympics opening and closing ceremonies celebrated the best of Britain, Images Cover image: AFP/Getty Images an indulgent tumble of the National Health Service, taxis, Spice Girls, and well- Cartoons by: Nick, Nick Downes, PC Vey, Joseph Farris, Rigby, Chris Madden, The preserved rock stars. They might have included Britain’s third political party too. Surreal McCoy, Bill Proud, Paul Wood It may be the butt of national jokes but it is also the custodian of the country’s core Additional design: Jennifer Owens, Mike Kenny liberal values. The polls suggest that extinction is conceivable; that would be a sad ISSN: 13595024 reward for the courage of forming the coalition, and would be Britain’s loss. prospect september 2012 3 Contents September 2012

This month Features Life 4 If I ruled the world grayson perry 20 Death by coalition? 70 Food phonies 6 Recommends Is it game over for the Lib Dems? Have the foodies had their day? 8 Diary peter kellner hephzibah anderson 10 Letters What should they do? james macintyre & james elwes 28 Mo and me Opinions British Somalis must integrate. 12 The dangers of haste ismail einashe Against short-term thinking. andrew haldane 13 Sensing the unreal Psychosis is widespread. lucy maddox 14 Data means health We need digital medical records. 72 Leith on life mark walport Attack of the moths. sam leith 16 Icelandic squall 73 Wine The EU should stay firm on fishing. The art of wine making. stephen tindale barry smith Arts & Books 74 Neverending stories The new passion for fairy tales. adam kirsch

32 It’s Florida, stupid 18 Revelatory Games Will the Sunshine State once again An American tribute. decide the presidential election? paul walker bledsoe diane roberts plus stephen collins’s cartoon strip. 36 An Orthodox challenge Israel’s new strain. Science & technology gershom gorenberg 58 Riddled with irregularity 44 Copycat China Why are languages so different? Piracy or liberation? philip ball yu hua plus China, bamboozled nick carn

77 Hollow ring of bronze Sculpture’s heavy obsession. laura gascoigne 78 Charming and challenging 60 The month ahead anjana ahuja The fall and rise of the ENO. alexandra coghlan 79 The month in books Special report jane shilling Economic impact of the Arab Spring Fiction 63 Reform, round two claire spencer 80 We’re flying 65 Private equity boom peter stamm An exciting bet for long-term investment. 50 Legacy of empire sheila patel Listen to the ruled, not the rulers. Endgames 66 Fastest growth on earth? kwasi kwarteng 84 The generalist didymus Kurdistan may be “the new Dubai” 54 Get your kicks matteo fagotto 84 Enigmas & puzzles ian stewart The Premier League is destroying 86 The Prospect list 68 Oil flows despite Spring English football. Concerns over oil are exaggerated. dj taylor 88 The way we were said hirsh Great women, by women. ian irvine 4 prospect september 2012 If I ruled the world Grayson Perry

My decisions would be arbitrary and impulsive. First off, I’d ban suits

I am under no illusions about my fitness to try to correct its distortions. People need this would work. Few people seem to have rule. I once appeared on the panel of BBC to be educated into awareness of their own the confidence to measure subjective expe- Question Time and very quickly bumped up subjective experiences so they can make the riences: what makes us truly happy, what against the limits of my own enthusiasm for right choices for themselves and help others makes a good life, what makes good art? politics. When David Dimbleby turned to to do so as well. People want reassurance, and marketeers me to ask my opinion on some story of the I would ban advertis- are queuing up out there to sell it to them in week, a voice inside my head was screaming and branding. All the form of brands. It seems toxic to me. My ing, “You know, I really don’t give a products would have reforms might encourage a more humane damn.” I’d love to be enthusiastic to be sold on their assessment of what constitutes a good life. about saving the world but I fear own merits. Chain I would also ban the business suit. It is a that even as the starving hordes of stores full of over- symbol of the corporate blandness that has the developing world were storming priced tat we don’t spread like a muffling duvet over the world’s a fortified Islington, I would be need might dis- cultures. People hide behind it as a cipher slumped behind the barricade study- appear. Crea- for “seriousness.” ing a book of antique maps. tivity and A lot of the world’s troubles seem to be Another trait of mine is that I say quality would caused by young men with an adrenaline yes to too many things and end up be spread addiction. I know I was one. I would put in spreading myself too thin. Rul- by word of place schemes to harness their energy for ing the world might be a disaster mouth. I good and make them grown-ups; we seem unless I learn to delegate. So let’s have no to have too many 40-year-old teenagers who just assume that I have consulted idea if can’t take responsibility. good people, and they have I would raise the age at which people tackled all the tedious could drive a car to 30 for women and 35 for logistical problems like men. This would halve the accident rate at a feeding and housing the stroke, and also cut traffic and reduce obes- poor and providing good ity in the young, who would have to walk and healthcare and education. cycle. My rulings would be The smartphone is causing a harmful pretty arbitrary—some seri- love triangle to develop in parents’ relation- ous, some trivial. As an artist, ships with their children. I would run cam- I’m used to making impulsive paigns to make it socially unacceptable for decisions and running with mothers, fathers and carers of young chil- them. I understand that if there dren to spend so much time ignoring their is no perfect way to do things then charges by calling and texting. The pre-ver- it is usually a question of com- bal development of children is the bedrock mitting to an okay solution and of their mental health. adapting. Taking photographs at social gath- All of my governments erings would also become taboo; peo- would be entirely female for ple miss many great experiences whilst at least a generation, or until taking a bad photo of it. This is part of a men learnt to adapt to the wider trend in society where people are liv- modern world. Individually, of ing their lives so that they look good to other course, women can be as corrupt people rather than paying attention to how and bigoted as men, but collectively I think they nourish them from within. Life is more they would produce a more empathetic and than the sum of its photogenic peak experi- pragmatic form of politics. Men seem to be ences. For every hour spent planning a wed- preoccupied with concepts like “honour” ding or a birth, at least a day should be spent and “respect.” on thinking about how to have a good rela- I would make emotional intelligence, tionship and how best to bring up a child. along with public speaking, a much bigger I expect my world to be pretty chaotic, part of education. To be aware of one’s sub- but at least it will be less concerned with tle feelings, responses and desires, and to be status, and concentrate more on the quality able to articulate them well, are truly great of experience. gifts. We have no choice but to look at the Grayson Perry is an artist and winner of the world through a lens coloured by our feel- 2003 Turner prize. His documentary series on British taste aired this summer on Channel 4 © getty Images getty © ings, and therefore we must recognise and Our fund managers’ most useful tool No. 5: A visitor pass

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0712_Prospect_MINC_PM_16 1 01/08/2012 11:14 6 prospect september 2012 Prospect recommends Five things to do this month

to the exquisite agonies of sexual Art obsession in his novels—is opting for the usual English compromise Liverpool Biennial of the ten-syllable metre. Starts 15th September Bérénice is more difficult even The Liverpool Biennial, founded than Phèdre, but Anne-Marie in 1998, has become the larg- Duff is probably the right actress est contemporary art festival in to have a go. She’s a wonderfully the country, commissioning new expressive Irish firebrand who work from artists from all over the sounded the depths as Shaw’s world and invading unexpected Saint Joan at the National and buildings and public spaces in the Rattigan’s Alma Rattenbury city. This year the great Ameri- at the Old Vic. She follows two can artist Doug Aitken is creat- other formidable blondes, Sheila ing a video installation on Albert Gish (1982) and Lindsay Duncan Dock, just outside Tate Liverpool, (1990), in the role of the Queen in a temporary structure designed of Palestine, who’s seething with in collaboration with the British desire for Titus. Titus groans, architect David Adjaye. suddenly too busy to notice: he’s Other highlights include a just starting a new job as Roman commission by the Argentine art- emperor. So he sends along his ist Jorge Macchi, and the pre- best friend, Antiochus, to comfort mier, in Liverpool Cathedral, of her. Not a good idea. a new concerto, A Crimson Grail, Laura Keeble’s “I’d Like to teach the world to sing!” shortlisted for Michael Coveney by the American composer Rhys the John Moores painting prize at the Liverpool Biennial Chatham requiring 100 volunteer electric guitarists. The famous passion and commitment, the of his life as a serious landscape Cunard Building will be opened company also has a reputation painter, who travelled through Concert for part of the city-wide group as “The Starship Enterprise” of the Mediterranean, Egypt and Staff Benda Bilili and Baloji show, The Unexpected Guest, while dance, boldly going where none India making sketches. The Ash- Royal Albert Hall, 6th September a former Royal Mail sorting office have been before. They were the molean’s collection includes his Customised tricycles and an elec- hosts two shows—City States and first company to deliver an Amer- oils of the plains of Lombardy, tric lute fashioned from a tin can: Bloomberg New Contemporaries. ican production of Swan Lake as and a sweeping view of the pass of it’s not standard tour equipment Not every work in every exhibi- well as extending their reper- Thermopylae. As a young man, he but it’s served Staff Benda Bilili tion will blow your mind—but the toire into the outer limits of con- published a book of watercolours perfectly well in their strange energy of the whole is impressive. temporary ballet. Under the of parrots, which had the distinc- journey from Kinshasa street Emma Crichton-Miller regime of longstanding artis- tion of being the first collection band to international music phe- tic director/choreographer Helgi drawn entirely from nature rather nomenon. Returning to London Tomasson, the company has than stuffed birds. Yet seen along- this month are the four singer/ become a powerhouse of creativ- side his illustrated poems, the guitarists (all disabled by polio Ballet ity and their arrival in the UK is idea that they aren’t by the same in their youth) and their rhythm San Francisco Ballet hotly anticipated. person seems nonsensical. Even section—a group of street kids Sadler’s Wells, 14th to 23rd Neil Norman if his “Old Man of Thermopylae / they met in the grounds of Kin- September Who never did anything properly” shasa Zoo. San Francisco Ballet, the oldest has outlived the majestic scenes The Democratic Republic of professional ballet company in Exhibition he painted. Congo puts out some of the most America, makes a rare journey to Laura Marsh diverse music in all Africa: you’ll the UK. A pair of triple bills and Happy Birthday Edward Lear: 200 hear rhythm and blues in the a quadruple bill include work by years of Nature and Nonsense squealing solos of their 21-year- George Balanchine (Divertimento The Ashmolean, Oxford, from 20th old frontman, while the main No 15), Christopher Wheeldon September Theatre ingredient here is rumba—white (Ghosts, Number Nine), Edwaard Literary conspiracy theorists set a Bérénice hot, Cuban-tinged harmonies and Liang (Symphonic Dances) and the lot of store by pedigree. Last year, Donmar Warehouse, 27th syncopation. They do very well for company’s resident choreogra- the film Anonymous dusted off September to 24th October themselves now—they were the pher Yuri Possokhov (Prokofiev’s the claim that the Earl of Oxford Rigorous and radical, Racine’s subject of an award-winning film Classical Symphony and the multi- wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Queen tragedies pose a challenge to audi- in 2010—but it was a long road media dance work RakU). Victoria trumps Tennyson (a ences and translators alike: how to recognition. Their song “Let’s Founded in 1933 as The San mere Lord) as the author of In to negotiate both the passions Go And Vote,” produced by a UN Francisco Opera Ballet, the com- Memoriam. Edward Lear tried to of such distant, regal charac- mission, was played incessantly pany is one of America’s “Big quash rumours that it was really ters, and the sedate eloquence of on radio and TV in the lead up to Three” ballet companies, eas- his patron the Earl of Derby who their verse, delivered in the heavy 2006’s historic elections, and was ily holding its own against New wrote his nonsense verse. rhyming tread of the twelve-syl- credited for the country’s 70 per York City Ballet and American It must have been a tempting lable metre? In this new version, cent turnout. Ballet Theatre. Renowned for its theory: Lear was known for most Alan Hollinghurst—no stranger Kate Mossman

8 prospect september 2012 Diary

Emptying Whitehall In fact A recent tweet by Peter Riddell, director of the Institute for Gov- “Robot” comes form the Czech ernment, read: “Turnover of Per- word robota meaning serf labour or manent Secretaries over six times drudgery. It first appeared in a 1921 that of Cabinet ministers since May play by Karel Capek. 2010. Three depts will have 3 Perm Wired, 35th January 2011 Secs in two years.” A startling rev- elation—but why? One suggestion Bras date back around 600 years; is that officials in their 50s, know- the oldest ones have been discovered ing they will go no higher, leave in an Austrian castle. Whitehall for one last big executive The Guardian, 18th July 2012 job. Suma Chakrabarti, now at the European Bank for Reconstruc- Seagulls don’t actually exist. It is a tion and Development, and Helen casual term used to refer to the gull Ghosh, who now runs the National “So, will my campaign speeches contain rhetorical questions? No...” family of around 25 different species. Trust, are both examples. But ten- The Telegraph, 18th July 2012 sions are also rising between per- band, might choose not to repeat the Tampa Bay Times, DollHouse manent secretaries and secretaries her past lack of generosity towards management said: “Senators, Women in Britain are among the of state, impatient with the pace of America’s most successful female House members, Bill Clinton and shortest in Europe and wear the implementation. “Permanent sec- politician. On Woman’s Hour in his cigar and Barack Obama re- highest heels; the average heel retaries are battered and no longer January 2008, when it seemed as if ceive free admission.” height is 3.3 inches. the masters of Whitehall,” said one Hillary Clinton might beat Barack The Express, 20th July 2012 Westminster watcher. No wonder Obama to the Democratic nomina- Trouble with the Lawsky they’re leaving. tion, Mensch (then Bagshawe) said: The mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, is a “As a woman and an aspirant politi- The Standard Chartered affair (the cat called Stubbs. He has held the Adonis the lion tamer cian I would like to see women poli- bank was fined $340m for allegedly position for the last 15 years. ticians coming up who aren’t mar- having “hidden” £160bn of trans- CNN, 17th July 2012 In his new book, out in early Sep- ried to somebody... Would [Hillary] actions with Iran in contravention tember, Andrew Adonis calls his be in this position if she weren’t the of international sanctions) is the British holidaymakers spend £118m experience of working with the wife of Bill Clinton? I don’t think most serious of all the recent prob- a year buying things they forget to tempestuous Chris Woodhead, the so.” Mensch pronounced that the lems for banks—not least because take on holiday. former chief schools inspector, his Secretary of State, twice-elected the New York State superintenden- Mail Online, 19th July 2012 “closest lifetime encounter with Senator for New York, had “fallen cy essentially has the power of life lion taming.” Adonis, Labour peer from grace” because “she doesn’t and death over banks in NYC. The Tippi Hedren, who starred in Alfred and former schools minister, notes have the great affability and charm current incumbent, Ben Lawsky, Hitchcock’s The Birds, has a cat that “I was fascinated by the lion that her husband has.” She wins is politically ambitious beyond his called Johnny Depp. but determined not to be eaten few prizes for either female soli- years, and is well aware that the Ira- The Financial Times, 27th July 2012 alive and just about succeeded.” He darity or prescience; Hillary has nian bogeyman goes down a treat did; the academies project, which won many plaudits for her per- with potential campaign donors. Approximately 22,000 pub quizzes he developed under Tony Blair, has formance, consistently beating take place every week in the UK, expanded, even if controversy has Obama in approval ratings. Poetry games compared to 2,000 in America. expanded too. Times of India, 1st July 2012 Pol dancing An Olympics poem by Carol Anne Mo immigration? Duffy, the poet laureate, caught the Climbers can use smartphones to Republican Conventions always of- eye of the twittersphere. Lines such keep in touch from the top of Mount Will the feel-good multicultur- fer good entertainment. Highlights as “We’ve had our pockets picked Everest, where there has been 3G alism of the Olympics cause the of the August 2012 convention in / the soft, white hands of bank- mobile service since the end of 2010. government to adjust its immigra- Tampa, Florida include country ers,” and “enough of the soundbite New York Times, 29th October 2010 tion policy? The word is no, it will star Trace Adkins, best known for abstract nouns / austerity, policy, not. According to one Whitehall his hit “(This Ain’t) No Thinkin’ legacy, of tightening metaphorical watcher, the government is having Thing,” as well as the comedic pres- belts,” led to a slew of parodies. a big enough problem achieving its ence of Donald Trump. The town Prospect here honours its three fa- desired reduction in immigration. is also rising to the occasion with vourites. Bronze goes to @Ilana for Any kind of relaxation would lead its own offerings. The nightspot “I hope my poem will bring back it to missing its targets by an even Deja Vu advertised for “as many Labour / And another book deal greater margin. showgirls as we can fit in the club with Faber & Faber.” Silver goes to keep up with the demand for to @thhamilton for: “Britain wins Don’t Menschion it beautiful girls from the Republi- a bronze in kayak / Lack of growth can National Convention!!!” Some discredits Hayek.” But gold medal Louise Mensch, in forsaking her might favour Thee DollHouse (sic), goes to @JeremyBrier, for: “Lon- parliamentary seat and moving to featuring Lisa Ann, star of the film don is full of Olympic cheer / Insert “Yeah, I know I never call, mother, New York to be with her new hus- Who’s Nailin’ Paylin? In an email to trite left wing platitude here.” but I’m calling you now, OK?”

10 prospect september 2012 Letters

Peace in the Middle East The Soros solution

I am a former foreign office col- George Soros’s proposals for res- league of Tom Phillips (“Failure is cuing the euro (“One way out,” the most likely outcome,” August) August) don’t tackle the root cause from the late 1990s, when we dealt of the crisis. The euro became for with Balkan issues. I recall Presi- Germany a strongly undervalued dent Izetbegovic telling me that currency, further boosting its al- the Bosniac Muslim community in ready strong economy. But it is act- Bosnia was so small it could not af- ing as a strongly overvalued curren- ford “ethnic disarmament” until it cy for the Mediterranean countries, was quite sure that its neighbours choking their economies. (the Serbs and Croats) were not Since it is mainly Germany’s bent on scattering it. euro participation which blocks The underlying dynamic in the any chance of overcoming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is as crisis, Germany should leave the simple. Neither side sees any ad- euro. Shortly after introducing vantage in “ethnic disarmament.” Cover story, August: an ambassador’s farewell to the Middle East its new deutschemark, Germany The emerging Arab mainstream is could be joined by other strong content to erode Israel’s resistance Tom Phillips left out the main rea- How good to see Tom Phillips’s euro-economies. The remain- by creating endless and unpleas- son why peace is unlikely: neither clear and forensic piece on why ing members will benefit from a ant—if not violent—existential the Palestinians nor the Israelis Israel-Palestine peace processes devaluating euro. Inflation will uncertainty. The Israeli leadership want a two-state solution. The Ne- seem doomed to fail. And what a reduce their debts and economic responds by digging in hard. The tanyahu government in Israel is shame that it’s so rare to find such growth will be slowly restored. Palestinians are collateral damage. supportive of the settlements and clear analysis in the UK’s main- Gjalt R Smit Phillips’s article acknowledges this. has never shown reason to believe stream media. Switzerland The best way to create a context that it supports the idea of a Pal- But is there an alternative con- in which Israel is compelled to look estinian state. On the Palestinian clusion—namely that an inclusive Think tank of the year for strategic compromises is to de- side, neither Hamas nor Fatah has one-state solution is, strangely, a mocratise the Middle East and ever acknowledged Israel’s right to more likely “successful” outcome, The entries in the Energy and En- give its citizens some direct stake exist. Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s even if it remains some way off? vironment category of the Prospect in a reasonable peace process and proposal in 2000 and chose to be- Phil Vernon Think Tank Awards (August) were, shared prosperity. Unfortunately, gin the Intifada; Abu Mazen re- Kent according to the judges, surpris- the world for 50 years has accepted jected Ehud Olmert’s proposal in ingly underwhelming. I wasn’t a bit the worst and most extreme forms 2008. The Israelis struggle with Of course George Mitchell failed surprised. Between 2008 and 2011, of non-democratic Arab govern- the idea of dividing the land and to broker a peace deal in the Mid- I observed the sector as communi- ment, not least in Saudi Arabia. evacuating the West Bank settlers, dle East (“Interview,” August). cations director of a small NGO, In short, a policy of “the worse the but they did have a few proposals. The Good Friday agreement advising MPs on climate change. better” suits too many capitals. For the Palestinians, the two-state didn’t happen just because of My impression of think tanks was Charles Crawford solution is a bluff. Mitchell, Bertie Ahern and Tony that they were all in their own “si- Bampton Aryeh Freidson Blair. They reaped the fruits of los,” peddling their own specialist Via the Prospect website the work of previous Irish, British message, often backed by vested “The Americans can never be a and US leaders as well as com- interests and usually unable to see genuinely impartial broker—the A two-state solution is inherently munity groups and the terrorists the whole picture. whole weight of their system and racist. Israel treats its own citizens themselves. Jasper Bouverie their perceptions tilt them to- in a discriminatory way, and runs But there’s a more subtle dif- Via the Prospect website wards the Israelis,” writes Tom a fully fledged apartheid system ference between Ireland and the Phillips. American views toward on the West Bank. It needs suf- Middle East. By 1997, the conflict Industrial decline Israel are shifting. Most commen- ficient citizens in the west to ac- in Ireland had long since ceased tators here see a chasm opening knowledge what is happening being about religion and had be- Richard Lambert, in his otherwise up between American Jews and to force politicians to withdraw come political. Yet in the Middle excellent review of Joseph Stiglitz’s Israelis. Frankly, the idea of a ra- their financial and moral support East it remains religious, essen- new book (August), repeats the bidly pro-Israel American culture for the existing Israeli state, and tially the reality that those of the popular fallacy about Mrs Thatch- is a distortion. The United States is insist that all peoples in land con- Muslim faith do not want to live er and the UK’s industrial decline. far more willing to evaluate its alli- trolled by Israel have the human in peace with non-Muslims of any The manufacturing industry only ances with countries based on our rights that are a fundamental re- faith. declined from 26 per cent to 23 per national interests. quirement for all people. Until the conflict becomes po- cent of the economy in the 18 years David Pritchard Tom Phillips cannot imagine litical there will be no peace there. of Thatcher and Major: less than Wisconsin a viable alternative to a two-state In Ireland, the turning point was the decline in most other major solution. Perceptions in the world when Sinn Fein/ the IRA accepted economies over that period. The Correction: the image of “Song for Peace” change and Mr Phillips shouldn’t the basic fact that most of Ulster real decline, to 12 per cent, came accompanying Tom Phillips’s article was be so despairing. was part of the United Kingdom. under Blair and Brown. displayed upside down, having been supplied that way by AFP/Getty Images. Peter Norton Desmond FitzGerald David Paul Aylsham London London prospect september 2012 Letters 11

A liberal church Now everyone wants to copy the David Marquand poses the ques- You’ll never be Chinese USA’s culture and way of life sim- tion “Is Britain still liberal?” Last month, Mark Kitto explained why he’s leaving the country he ply because it has the most power (August), and, gratifyingly, he once loved. The letters below are from hundreds of comments that and influence. I deeply loathe this mentions the Church of England. the piece generated online. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk state of affairs, but I simply would The Church has been affected, to not want to live in a world where its detriment, by a shift to con- that baton were passed to China. servatism, shown in the “Taliban Being Chinese by descent and to leave, but if you cared enough I’d prefer to live under the Iranian tendency” of conservative evan- having lived in China for over a about China to come here, and to theocracy. gelicalism. The real Church of decade, many of the author’s views live here for two or five or ten years, I do disagree with some of the England is liberal in all the rich- resonate with me. Not because do you care enough to help us? article’s assertions on history. I ness of that tradition. At its best, we hate China, but because we Jefferson Mao don’t think it’s possible to speak the Church reflects the profound thought it would, or could, be bet- of superpowers before the second hospitality of God and his invita- ter than it is now. Well said Mark! I left China for world war, and it is not academi- tion to all: single, married, gay, Yes, the typical Chinese re- good yesterday. After 17 years, I cally acceptable now to say the straight and messed up. The sponse to the ideas presented in don’t want my kids to grow up in Mongols or Manchus became Chi- emergence of the conservative the article is “if you don’t like it, a “me” culture, nor live in an ex- nese, as less sinocentric narratives evangelical insurgency, together go home”—which is, essentially, pat bubble so they don’t see the are emerging. The author also has, with the “traditionalists” (though the very problem the author is selfishness, spitting and littering. I’d say, an idiosyncratic reading of which tradition being represented describing. I know many well edu- Even my 6-year-old sees the gap the effects of Leninism on China. is puzzling) is imposing firm and cated Chinese who share the same between donkey-cart peasant and You have to go back to the late exclusive boundaries rather than disillusionment about their coun- those with Ferraris/Benzes/Audis. Ming rise of commerce to explain gospel openness. try. What then, is your response Not a day has gone by when I’ve where Chinese culture is now. As a parish priest who stands to those people? To leave too? It not been asked my salary, cost of Lee explicitly in the liberal tradition, certainly seems that [Chinese] my villa. both theologically and politically, government leaders, after they Ray Plummer In my admittedly short experience it is made clear to me by the insur- have “acquired” enough wealth, of two-and-a-half years living in a gency that I am not really Chris- are doing exactly that. There’s a lot I disagree with here, mid-level city, and also in a very tian—that I don’t qualify for salva- Xiaobai but I just want to say that my par- rural area in Zhejiang province, I tion. It is my hope that we will rise ents came from South Asia to the have found [Mark Kitto’s obser- to the challenge by establishing Why does one come to China? To US 40 years ago. They are both citi- vations] not to be the case. While the true richness and service of have fun? To learn about other zens, speak fluent (accented)E ng- there is definitely the ubiquitous liberalism, this great tradition. cultures? To experience something lish, attended American graduate flaunting of new money in the The Revd David Yabbacome new? This is not a frivolous ques- schools and are as patriotic as can newer areas, I found there is still St Nicholas, Newport, Lincoln tion. What does it mean for Mark be. Yet the vast majority of people an extremely strong traditional to come to China in the 80s as a don’t perceive them as American family culture, and almost every- Namibian roads student and compare a nation of and never will. one I knew held strong traditional a billion people to a toddler learn- You enjoy all kinds of privileges family values. There are 1.4bn citi- Tahir Shah suggests (“Travel fa- ing to walk and talk? What does it as a foreigner in China, not least zens in China and the vast majority vourites,” August) that the excel- mean for someone used to the lib- your financial means and your of them aren’t a part of the com- lent roads in Namibia are due to eral, capitalist culture of the west ability to actually leave when you munist party, aren’t super-rich, its having been a German colony. to be unsatisfied that China has “fall out of love” with your China and shouldn’t be attributed with Absolute rubbish. The roads are not been able to cobble together dream. In light of that, how could the shallowness with which you so good because when the terri- a powerful enough alternative of you possibly expect not to be con- characterise the soulless money- tory was South-West Africa they its own? I actually think Mark is sidered an outsider? grubbers you are apparently sur- were vastly improved to enable aware of all of these things, but I’m Ms M.R. rounded by in Moganshan. South African Defence Force not sure that many expats reading There is no doubt about the ills troops to get to Angola where this article are. I lived in China from 2002 to 2009. of the communist government and they were (unofficially) fighting I am saddened that conditions There’s no way I could live there public systems. But I hope that you on Jonas Savimbi’s side (whose are bad in China for foreigners, again and the thought of raising made enough good friends during biography I was once asked to but only because I am saddened kids there is absurd. There is a dif- the 16 years you were in China that write). that conditions are bad in general ference between “yellow peril” rac- you aren’t regretting the whole On one of many trips I once for the vast majority of people who ism and an understanding of how time. went on a bus from Windhoek live there. While most expats have spine-chillingly soulless this coun- Matt Staskal to Upington so steady that we the option to leave, very few native try has become on various levels. were served dinner with wine on Chinese people have any choice at I’d rather have the evil of neoliberal Have your say board. all. China has a “me-first” attitude “democratic” capitalism dominate [email protected]. Richard Cox now, but that’s pretty common in than an ethno-nationalistic, moral- Suggested maximum 200 words. Salisbury the western world as well. It’s okay ly vacuous totalitarian capitalism. More letters: prospectmagazine.co.uk

In the October issue ONLINE: Nobel laureate Brian SpeciaL Offer Josephson on the Dawkins– Prospect and the London Stock Wonga.com vs the banks Wilson debate: Exchange are offering readers The carnivore course “Professor Dawkins is the most free entry to the 2012 London talented populariser of evolution- Investor Show on 26th October Is performance art dead? ary ideas of his generation, but at London Olympia. To register has made little contribution to the for a complimentary ticket visit On sale from primary scientific literature.” www.londoninvestorshow.com 20th September www.prospectmagazine.co.uk and enter the code “prospect”. 12 prospect september 2012 Opinions Short-term is small-minded 12 Everyday psychosis 13 Data means health 14 Icelandic squall 16 An Olympics tribute—from America 18

months. Surveys of those making investment decisions tell a similar tale. Most invest- Andrew Haldane ment managers seem to believe their man- dates encourage short-termism, with almost The dangers of haste three-quarters of them rebalancing their portfolios at least once per quarter. Dominic Short-term thinking is hurting the recovery Barton at McKinsey has called this “quarterly capitalism.” If all of this short-term churn was con- All of the main UK political parties are classical economists had it about right. fined to consenting adults who were trading agreed—short-termism is a bad thing. Ed Neuroscientists, studying and imaging the in financial markets, perhaps it would not Miliband has spoken of the “short-termism highways and byways of the brain, have dis- much matter. But it is not. Excessive churn that blights British enterprise.” The coa- covered that patient behaviour is associated potentially destroys value for end-savers and lition government set up a review team, with one region of the brain (the pre-frontal end-investors. On average, actively managed headed by John Kay, the economist, which cortex), impatient behaviour with another portfolios underperform passive, sit-on-your- recently proposed some solutions to the (the even less intuitive, mid-brain dopamine hands strategies, largely because the former problem. Everyone, it seems, is out to “Get region). Humans are, quite literally, in two gather transaction costs and the latter do Shorty.” But what exactly is short-termism? minds. not. These costs are borne by end-savers in How big of a problem is it? And what could Over the past half century, a wealth of the form of management fees and sub-stand- be done to lean against it? financial information has become available: ard portfolio performance. Short-termism is far from being a new from annual to near real-time reporting; Short-termism in financial markets can tty Im a g es Ge tty phenomenon. The earliest economists saw it from year-long to micro-second investing. also raise the cost of funds for companies as an intrinsic component of human nature. Like Martini-drinkers of the 1970s, that has undertaking long-term investment projects. We are apt to act like “children who pick the enabled trading “anytime, any place, any- Cash flows, which accrue at distant points in

rg v ia oo m be rg plums out of their pudding to eat them at where,” typically at a diminishingly low cost. the future, get too heavily “discounted”—in

© Bl © once,” wrote Alfred Marshall, the father of This technological shift, like the web, may effect, ignored—by financial markets seek- classical economics, in 1890. have shortened our attention spans, retun- ing nearer-term gratification. This myopia Or as AC Pigou, another ing our minds to a shorter wavelength. It has can mean that investment projects yield- prominent economist, encouraged impatience. ing high long-term returns, noted in 1920: “Our Certainly, investors appear to have such as research and telescopic faculty is become considerably more impatient over development pro- defective.” recent years. Fifty years ago, the average grammes, are at A century on, length of time a share was held by a UK or risk of being recent scientific US investor was around evidence has sug- seven years—today, it gested that the is less than seven prospect september 2012 opinions 13

OECD investment rates, 2010 % of GDP 30

25 OECD average Lucy Maddox 20 Sensing the unreal Psychosis is more common than 15 you think—even in children

When I first met Helen she didn’t want to talk to me, or anyone else. She stayed in her 10 room in the ward, sitting alone with her hood US UK

Italy up, emerging only for mealtimes. Only after Spain Korea Japan France Turkey Ireland Greece Austria Mexico Iceland Finland Canada Norway Sweden

Belgium several attempts did she agree to come out Portugal Australia Germany Denmark

Switzerland for a short walk in the hospital grounds. It Netherlands Luxembourg New Zealand took many more walks before she began to talk about her experiences. rejected by investors. A recent study of 100,000 US firms sug- Helen was being listened to, continu- Along with Richard Davies at the Bank gests that short-term pressures on pub- ally, by the judges from a TV talent show. of England, I have recently estimated the licly quoted companies can have a dramatic Anything she said could be heard by all of scale of that “excess discounting” of future impact on investment rates. Private firms, them. Sometimes they responded to what cash flows among SU and UK companies which operate without the pressure of hav- they heard by talking to her through the over a 20-year period. On average, returns ing to supply numbers each quarter, were television. No one else could tell they were one year ahead are discounted by finan- found to invest two and a half times more speaking directly to her, a 13-year-old girl cial markets around 5-10 per cent “too than otherwise identical publicly quoted from Edgware, but she knew. It made her much.” In other words, investors behave as firms. And when investment opportunities feel good. It made her feel special. It also if a promised payment tomorrow of £100 is arose, investment by privately owned com- got in the way of things she was supposed to worth only £90, and as if a £100 promised panies increased three and a half times be doing, like school. Helen hadn’t been to payment the day after tomorrow is worth more than publicly owned equivalents. school in nearly a year. only £81. For future projects, that can have All of which begs the public policy ques- Psychosis is an umbrella term for loss a dramatic impact. tion—what should be done? The Kay review of contact from reality. It includes unusual Imagine a project that provides an contained some excellent ideas, includ- thoughts, such as delusions or paranoia, and annual income stream of $10 and requires a ing the empowerment of asset managers. unusual sensory experiences, like seeing, $60 initial investment. If the “true” discount Putting more power into the hands of the hearing or feeling things that others cannot. rate is 8.5 per cent per year, this project patient-minded is the right thing to do. For Schizophrenia refers to the more chronic repays the initial outlay after nine years. A example, a respectable case can be made for presence of these features, but they can also rational company would undertake it. But rewarding long-term shareholders with extra form part of mood disorders like depression with excess discounting of just 10 per cent voting rights. That is already the case in and bipolar disorder. Psychosis is diagnosed per year, investors would believe the project France, where shareholders holding a secu- when it interrupts somebody’s life to the would never break even and reject it. rity for at least two years often have their vot- extent that they, or those around them, Investment behaviour by companies fits ing rights doubled. are significantly distressed. It is possible to these facts. A survey of the Chief Finan- Those extra ownership rights could, in have one psychotic episode and never have cial Officers of over 400 companies in 2005 principle, be reinforced by creating financial another. It is also possible to experience found that, in order to meet their quar- incentives for long-termism. For example, psychotic-like experiences without distress terly earnings numbers, more than three- loyalty bonuses could be awarded to share- or impact on everyday functioning. In fact, quarters of them would reject investment holders and staff based on length of tenure. psychotic-like experiences are much more projects that enhanced the long-term value These schemes already operate in success- common in the general population than of their firms. If they are to be believed, ful companies such as L’Oréal, the cosmet- most people think. Approximately 40 per quarterly capitalism is seriously inhibiting ics manufacturer. Alternatively, capital gains cent of adults and over half of children in long-term investment. rates on project cash flows could be made community-based research samples report In the UK, that should be a real cause for duration-dependent, tapering off according “unusual” perceptions or ideas when asked. concern. In 2008, the UK was bottom of a to the length of the holding period. This spectrum of experience is having an league table produced by the Organisation Investment is tomorrow’s growth. That is increasing impact on the way mental health for Economic Cooperation and Develop- as close to a fact as you will ever find in eco- professionals think about psychosis. Views ment (OECD) (Chart 1, published in 2010). nomics. There is compelling evidence that about psychosis are changing. Measures of research and development short-termism is slowing investment today Ideas about how to treat psychosis have (R&D) spending are even more discourag- and so growth tomorrow. In the current envi- already changed radically over the years. ing. A recent survey of the top 1000 R&D ronment, that is something we can ill afford. Although schizophrenia was named in firms in the UK found that investment rates That defective telescope needs repairing. the early 1900s, symptoms were described among UK-owned firms were almost half Andrew Haldane is executive director for long before. Historically, treatments were those of foreign-owned firms. financial stability at the Bank of England often motivated by fear and lack of 101123_gbr_smb_aug_1b_4c_pcp_fp210x275_prospect_magazine_pr.indd101123_gbr_smb_aug_1b_4c_pcp_fp2100x2275_prospectt_magazine_pr.indd 1 8/88/13/12/1/13/3/1/12 3:3:53:5555 PM 14 opinions prospect september 2012

understanding. Initial practices of social sode. Some children even younger than this we can all relate. The feeling that others are exclusion and exorcism gave way to Victorian report having unusual (or psychotic-like) talking about us behind our backs, an odd asylums and invasive brain operations. Only experiences, which upset them and which sense that coincidences happen in a way that in the mid-20th century did anti-psychotic impair their everyday life, but not so much benefits us in particular—these are not so far medication become available. Widespread that teachers or family might notice. While removed from the everyday. Ideas about psy- acceptance of evidence for talking therapies this is not full-blown psychosis, these expe- chosis are changing as we realise that anom- has been even more recent. Current riences are still distressing and function- alous does not equal uncommon, for anyone treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia ally unhelpful, and left unchecked, might and at any age. no longer has medication as its sole focus, become a more serious problem. Brand new Lucy Maddox is a child and adolescent but includes provision of psychological interventions using CBT to proactively tar- clinical psychologist working for the NHS and treatments for individuals and their families, get children with unusual experiences are a lecturer at the Anna Freud Centre. Patient as recognised in National Institute for being used in trials at the Institute of Psy- details have been anonymised Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines. chiatry at King’s College London. Results Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are promising, suggesting that both chil- and family intervention are the currently dren and adults can benefit from very early recommended talking therapies for psy- intervention and psychological help. Med- chosis. CBT identifies unhelpful thoughts ical and psychological interventions are and behaviours and works to discover alter- already offered for first-episode psychosis, native possibilities. It conceptualises the often in young adults or teenagers.T his new problem not as the unusual experiences research suggests that heading off unusual themselves, but the meaning attributed experiences, by providing coping strategies to them and resulting behaviours. So with and talking therapies before they become Mark Walport Helen, instead of getting into a tug-of-war a bigger difficulty, might be the way that about whether or not the TV judges were future interventions go. Data means health listening to our conversations, we thought Increasingly, mental health problems are together about whether this was a good or being thought about on a continuum. Pub- We should all back proposals to a bad thing, and what alternative possi- lic perceptions of psychosis have probably make our medical records public ble ideas there were about what was going been slower to catch up with this shift than on. What did her family and friends think? with other diagnoses such as depression. The decade to come promises a transforma- What did the ward psychiatrist think? How Psychosis fits more with stereotypical ideas tion in healthcare, as the digital revolution much did she believe each explanation? of madness, which can be frightening. Dis- allows doctors and other medical profession- What would it mean if each explanation tancing people with psychosis removes from als to share data about patients, improving were true? It became clear that letting go of them from us and protects us from the pos- their care and advancing research. the feeling of being watched would be too sibility that anyone can feel detached from Over the next few months, a pair of gov- upsetting for Helen without having some shared reality. Although it may seem eas- ernment initiatives will do much to deter- other way of feeling special. ier to identify with and talk about feeling mine how far and how fast the NHS can do Helen was only 13, but she had experi- sad than to talk about feeling paranoid, it is this. A panel led by Fiona Caldicott, of which enced a clinically significant psychotic epi- likely there is also something there to which I am a member, is to report on the balance between protecting patient confidentiality and sharing information to enhance care. Ministers are also to seek the views of the public on changing the NHS Constitution to improve access to patient data for critical medical research. As medical data has such power to deliver better understanding of disease and better patient outcomes, it is important we find the best way of sharing it. Doctors have long understood that the best possible healthcare is built on the best possible data. As a medical student in the 1970s, I was taught that the foundations of diagnosis and treatment were to take a detailed history and to perform a comprehensive clinical examination. The information that these basic techniques reveal is as fundamental to good practice today as it was then. What has changed is our ability to record it and access it, to the benefit of our patients. In 1978, when I arrived at Hammersmith Hospital to work with the distinguished clinical pharmacologist Colin Dollery, I saw how this can work. Dollery’s practice was among the first to record the results of a structured questionnaire and examination in a computer database, bringing great improvements to

© Cu s p/Sup e rSt oc k © the diagnosis and management of high blood In tests, 40 per cent of adults and over half of children report “unusual” perceptions or ideas pressure. Accurate records led to accurate 16 opinions prospect september 2012 therapy, monitored for effectiveness and side effects. Complications of hypertension such as heart, eye and kidney disease were identified early and could be prevented by aggres- sive control of blood pressure. As IT has advanced still further, it has become as unacceptable for us to practise medicine with fragmented records, often still kept on different pieces of paper in different parts of the health system, as it would be to practise without the latest drugs and diag- nostics. It means ignoring technology that has the power to save lives. Many of us suffer from chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and can- cer, and many more of us will do so as we age. These conditions need joined-up care in many different settings. Yet our general practitioners still often work with one set of clinical records and nurses in hospitals with another. Each and every hospital we attend, in turn, has a different set of records from the last. Our social care providers have access to none of the above. Digital technology can provide every one of these healthcare professionals with access to a single, integrated record for every patient. It should also allow individual patients to see the data that is held about them, empowering us to become active partners in our own care. Medical records, of course, contain private data, which could be carelessly or mali- ciously disclosed. A parent could coerce a daughter into revealing her contraceptive history. An obsessive fan could gain access to the health records of a celebrity. But it is a fiction to imagine that the haphazard paper chits of old are more private than the modern digital alternative. Paper records have always presented a security risk. As for data loss, arguing that this is best mitigated by holding it in incomplete, inaccurate or inaccessi- ble form seems a curious response. A better one is to ensure that medical data is shared with approved professionals who can put it to good use, while respecting patient privacy. This group should include However, the European Commission should not only clinicians involved in patient care, remain firm on its negotiating demands on but also approved researchers. Most patients fishing and whaling. with a chronic disease already support this Iceland applied to join the EU in 2009, strongly, because they understand the impor- in the aftermath of its banking crisis. The tance of data in developing better prevention, island saw EU membership as a route to diagnosis and treatment. It is also important economic recovery. Out of the 35 negotiat- that outdated therapies are abandoned in ing chapters, 18 have been opened. Ten of favour of improved ones. For these things to Stephen Tindale these have been provisionally completed. happen, clinical practices must be constantly Iceland’s accession bid has support monitored for effectiveness and side effects – Icelandic squall among member states. The main obstacle and that requires data. is that Icelanders themselves are likely to Research must be central to healthcare if The EU should not give an inch reject it. Once negotiations are completed, healthcare is to improve. The government’s on fishing and whaling Icelanders will vote on membership. Polls proposed changes to the NHS Constitu- suggest that a quarter will vote yes, with tion would embed this principle. The result Iceland is the world’s longest running over half against and a fifth undecided. would be to bring closer to reality a vision of democracy. At a time when European Support for membership has fallen since the NHS as a system for providing integrated Union institutions are still being criticised negotiations began in 2009, in part because health and social care at an affordable price. for a democratic deficit, Iceland would be a Iceland has recovered from the 2008 bank- Mark Walport is director of the Wellcome Trust valuable and welcome member of the club. ing and debt crises, and is growing at over prospect september 2012 opinions 17

“Mackerel war”: the EU argues that Iceland’s fishing quota is unsustainable

Portugal and Spain are demanding sanctions. The Commission has threatened to block Icelandic ships from unloading mackerel at EU ports. The EU and Iceland (plus the Faroe Islands and Norway) will meet in Septem- ber for talks. Some movement by the Com- mission to defuse the argument would be understandable. But the Commission should continue to base its position on its scientific estimate of a sustainable catch. On whaling, the Commission should not move at all. In 2006 Iceland resumed commercial whaling of fin whales and minke whales. Thus it joined Norway in defying the international moratorium on commercial whaling. Iceland has always caught some minke whales for “scientific research.” So the 2006 decision made little practical difference on minke—it simply represented Ice- “Iceland has recovered from the 2008 banking and debt crises, and is growing at over four per cent per year”

land becoming more open about its reasons for whaling. But it did represent a restart of fin-whale hunting. Fin whales are an endan- gered species. Iceland maintains that there are enough fin whales in Icelandic waters for a small catch to be sustainable. This may or may not be correct, but is anyway not relevant to EU negotiations. EU law prevents the killing of any whales, even those which (like minke) are relatively numerous. EU law is based partly on the need to protect biological diversity, but partly also on the need to prevent animal suffering. Being killed by harpoons is a particularly painful, and often slow, way for an animal to die. four per cent per year. EU membership is a court and half the debt has been paid. Not all Icelanders favour whaling. no longer seen as a source of stability. But So the key negotiating issues are fishing Whale watching is an important part of support for membership has also fallen and whaling. The European Commission their tourism industry—and increased tour- because of the Commission’s perceived should remain firm on both. It would be ism is one of the drivers of economic recov- (by Icelanders) unfairness over Icesave, counter-productive to lower existing EU ery. Yet some Icelanders argue that whaling the online savings bank, and the current standards to attract a new member. If this is an important part of their culture and “mackerel war.” And the totemic issue of firmness leads to Iceland voting no in a ref- tradition. Culture is important, and Euro- whaling remains to be confronted. erendum, so be it. pean integration must respect most cul- Icesave was run by Landsbanki between Iceland sets its own fishing policy and tural traditions. But not all, and not those 2006 and 2008, with over 300,000 customers the industry provides 40 per cent of its which involve cruelty. in the UK and 125,000 in the Netherlands. export earnings, and eight per cent of The ongoing dispute about Icesave and But in 2008 Landsbanki went into receiver- employment. The current dispute focuses the Icelandic economic recovery may well ship. The British and Dutch governments on mackerel. Iceland has increased its result in Iceland voting no to EU member- argue that Iceland’s government is obliged annual quota for mackerel from 2,000 ship, whatever concessions the Commis- to pay €20,000 to each depositor. Reykja- tonnes to 146,000 tonnes. Reykjavik argues sion has offered on fish and whales.T he EU vik argues that this would place the bank in that this is sustainable because climate should not lower its standards whatever the €2.6bn of negative equity, which would have tty Im a g es Geo gr a ph ic / Ge tty change is resulting in more mackerel in its rewards. To lower them and get no reward had to be paid by Icelandic taxpayers. waters. The Commission disagrees, and would be particularly unwise. t iona l The time for negotiation over Icesave argues that Iceland’s quota is 36 per cent Stephen Tindale is an associate fellow at the

economic times, the world came here to cele- cies, Cameron has toned it down, perhaps in brate the young, strong and purposeful. And part because many eastern European visitors after a long period of whingeing, the majority left after feeling unwanted. Indeed,C ameron of Great Britain embraced the celebration. called London the world’s “most diverse” city. This may explain why Mitt Romney’s criti- So now all is forgiveness and forbearance. cism of the organisational competence of the But Britain’s role as a former imperial power London Games was greeted with such con- is still seen here as both a responsibility and demnation. It seemed petty, and conspic- special privilege. Many Brits feel deep kin- Paul Walker Bledsoe uously out of step with the sudden wave of ship and a sense of shared history with peo- Anglo-ardour. David Cameron dryly noted ples around the globe who gathered for the Revelatory Games that perhaps it was a bit easier to put on Games—Indians, Caribbean peoples, West games “in the middle of nowhere,” a thinly and East Africans, Americans and dozens An American tribute veiled-reference to Romney’s role in the Salt more. During the Games, the 50th anniver- Lake City Winter Games of 2002. Not to be sary of Jamaican independence was widely The London Olympic Games were a reve- outdone, Boris Johnson led chants lampoon- celebrated by the hundreds of thousands of lation. Who knew that the British could be ing Romney at a rally of 60,000 in Hyde Park. émigrés from Jamaica who are now proud such splendid, inspirational athletes? Or even Many Brits had a similar reaction to Rom- British citizens. Usain Bolt’s stunning repeat more astoundingly, that the average Briton, ney’s remark. An English friend commented: wins in the 100 and 200 metres added inde- when he or she chooses to, could be over- “We demonstrated a few organisational abil- scribable delight to these festivities. Such whelmingly friendly—and even happy? ities running the empire (see p50) and fight- events can never repair the injury of the slave While American myself, I am married to ing the second world war.” Quite right. trade and the worst of the empire, but they an Englishwoman, and so I have seen inklings Of course a good many of the British ath- can bring countries together now. of these capacities among her tribe before. letes are originally from elsewhere, like the The 19th-century historian Thomas But only the confluence of the Queen’s Dia- engaging Somali-born 10,000 metre cham- Macaulay declared that the end of British mond Jubilee and the Olympics could have pion Mo Farah (see p28), who after claim- rule in India would be “the proudest day in brought about such a widespread miracle of ing gold said “if it hadn’t been for the crowd English history” provided that Britain left enthusiasm across this nation. I don’t think I’d have won that race.” Some, behind its language and the “imperishable London is perhaps the most multicul- like Jessica Ennis, the heptathlon champion, empire of our arts and morals, our litera- tural city in the world. Walking even in pre- have one parent from a former colony—her ture and our laws.” In effect, Macaulay was vious years in Covent Garden, say, or along father is from Jamaica. And even Americans describing what is now called “soft power.” the south bank of the Thames, one routinely are being embraced. Will Claye, a US long- That is a British empire made to last, and encountered a dizzying multitude of lan- jumper, enthused: “I’m not from this coun- one that has perhaps finally found its mature guages found in no other place on the planet. try—but they made me feel like I am.” place in the world during these Games. It is With the end of the empire largely accom- Forgotten, seemingly, is the fierce Brit- a lesson American leaders, as we manage the plished, with the fall of the Soviet Union, ish anti-immigrant strain, which was so pro- evolution of our own type of empire, would the rise of cheap air travel, and as learning nounced just five years ago when a more than do well to remember. English has become a critical advantage in half a million Poles and other eastern Euro- Paul Walker Bledsoe is a consultant on energy, the global economy, London has, despite peans finally had just enough money and climate change and tax policy, and a former its problems, become the World City. So it freedom to come to London. After flirting Clinton White House aide. This article first seems fitting that after four years of difficult for a few years with nativist rhetoric and poli- appeared in The Hill, a US newspaper THE SCOTTISH AMERICAN INVESTMENT COMPANY

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Your call may be recorded for training or monitoring purposes. Baillie Gifford Savings Management Limited (BGSM) is the manager of the Baillie Gifford Investment Trust Share Plan and Investment Trust ISA and is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford & Co, which is the manager and secretary of the Scottish American Investment Company P.L.C. Your personal data is held and used by BGSM in accordance with data protection legislation. We may use your information to send you information about Baillie Gifford products, funds or special offers and to contact you for business research purposes. We will only disclose your information to other companies within the Baillie Gifford group and to agents appointed by us for these purposes. You can withdraw your consent to receiving further marketing communications from us and to being contacted for business research purposes at any time. You also have the right to review and amend your data at any time. 20 prospect september 2012 Features End of the Lib Dems? 20 Mo and me: my Olympic idol 28 It’s Florida, stupid 32 Israel’s Orthodox danger 36 Copycat China 44 Britain’s Empire strikes back 50 The morality of English football 54 Death by coalition? The Liberal Democrats have lost almost 4m voters since the 2010 election. Is this the end? peter kellner

he question is as tough as it is obvious: can the Lib- tions and, even more spectacularly, by-elections by attracting eral Democrats revive their flagging fortunes? the tactical votes of people who identify with other parties, and New polling data, gathered by YouGov, explores a large slice of the people who don’t identify with any party. the nature of the party’s support at the last election, In 2010, the Lib Dems secured the votes of 1.6m Labour iden- pinpoints the groups that have drifted away, and tifiers and 1.8m people with no party ID.T he group identifying Tidentifies problems the party must tackle if it is to avoid a near itself as Labour was more left-wing than Labour voters gener- wipe-out at the next election. ally. It comprised a mixture of people who were disillusioned The impact of the defection of Lib Dem voters is hard to with Labour over such matters as Iraq and student fees, and overstate. The Lib Dems won 57 seats at the last general elec- tactical voters—passionate anti-Tories who feared that Labour tion, when they won 24 per cent of the vote across Britain. If couldn’t win locally. The vast majority of these have returned to they remain stuck on 10 per cent, then they would be reduced Labour. Today, just 200,000 Labour identifiers would vote Lib to just 10 MPs, on the conventional assumption of a uniform Dem. swing. Recovery to 15 per cent would lift this to 28 seats, half As for the 1.8m people with no party identity who voted Lib their present total. Dem last time, the Lib Dems have lost more than 1.5m. They Much of the Lib Dems’ current travails can be traced back to have splintered all over the place: around 600,000 to Labour, the nature of their vote in 2010. As usual, it contained a much 200,000 each to the Greens and Tories and smaller numbers to higher proportion of fair-weather friends than Labour or the UKIP and the Welsh and Scottish nationalists. Around 400,000 Conservatives. This is seen when we compare voting behaviour don’t know how they would vote. Some no-party-ID voters are with results to another question that YouGov regularly asks: passionate about politics, and are usually inspired by issue “Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as Con- rather than party; but most are less interested in politics than servative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish National, Plaid the average voter. Their support for the Lib Dems was always Cymru, or don’t you usually think of yourself as any of these?” easy-come-easy-go. It was the most obvious way to protest This tells us not which party people would vote for but which against the two main parties. Moreover, in 2010, voting Lib Dem they identify with. These “party ID” figures contain some awk- had a certain trendiness, especially after Nick Clegg’s triumph ward truths for the Lib Dems. in the first leaders’ debate on television.T oday, anyone wishing In 2010, the great majority of Labour and Conservative vot- to follow a trend or protest against government moves is unlikely ers also identified with their party (the figures were 84 per cent to vote Lib Dem. and 76 per cent respectively.) With the Lib Dems the figure was The collapse of these two distinct sources of Lib Dem support much smaller: just 43 per cent. Of the 6.8m people who voted explains most of their decline, from 24 per cent of the electorate for them, just under 3m identified with the party, while almost in 2010 to around 10 per cent today. In contrast, support among 4m did not. Lib Dem identifiers has held up rather better, from 2.9m votes It has been like this for many years. The Lib Dem core vote two years ago to 2.3m today. Clearly it would help the party if has always been tiny. They add to their support at general elec- this 600,000 returned to the fold at the next election; but even if they all did so, this would add only two percentage points to Peter Kellner is President of YouGov the Lib Dem current vote share. And even that is improbable: a prospect september 2012 Death by coalition? 21 © 2010 a a me r a 2010 © A 2010 protest against student fees; if the Lib Dems stay on 10 per cent public support, at the next election they could have 10 MPs, not 57 fair number of these lost Lib Dem identifiers are left-wing vot- deserters as possible—the 4m people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 ers who will find it hard to forgive Clegg for joining forces with but who say they wouldn’t do so today—and win new converts? David Cameron. YouGov research indicates that there are four related problems that the party must address. n practice, their losses might not be quite so bad, if Lib Dem MPs exploit their local personal popularity to min- 1. Ideology. From time to time YouGov conducts a “spectrum” imise the loss of votes in their own constituencies. The poll. We ask people where they place themselves, the main par- figures would have been even worse had the Lib Dems con- ties and the party leaders on a seven-point scale from left to Itinued to back the new boundaries, reducing the House of Com- right. We allocate a number to each position on the scale, from mons from 650 to 600 seats. Clegg has done his party a service minus 100 for “very left-wing” via 0 for “centre” to plus 100 by repudiating this part of the coalition agreement. Even so, for “very right-wing.” We calculate averages for each group of without a big recovery, his party is likely to end up at least 20 answers. seats down. At first blush, the Lib Dems should be happy with our find- What, then, do the Lib Dems need to do to win back as many ings. On average, Lib Dem voters place themselves at (-1), the 22 death by coalition? prospect september 2012

party at (-5) and its leader at (-1), all very close to the centre. On The state they’re in their own, these figures would suggest the party occupies the Lib Dem vote, millions May 2010 July 2012 ideal ideological space. Voters who generally think of themselves as: Close examination dispels this happy thought. Most right-of- Liberal 2.9 centre voters place the Lib Dems on the left and most left-of- Democrat 2.3 (-0.6) centre voters place the party on the right. Few voters feel that the party’s ideological location is the same as their own. This is 1.6 Labour especially marked among voters who have switched from Lib 0.2 (-1.4) Dem to Labour: they are overwhelmingly on the left themselves, 0.4 but feel that the Lib Dems no longer are. Conservative The problem the Lib Dems face is the opposite of the ben- 0.1 (-0.3) efit they enjoyed at the height of C“ leggmania” two years ago. 1.8 Then, for a short while, millions of voters projected their own None 0.3 (-1.5) idea of the perfect political party onto the Lib Dems and said they would vote for them. Today, many voters project their idea 6.8 Total of the least perfect party onto the Lib Dems and say they will 3 (-3.8) cast their vote elsewhere. Unless the party dispels this mixture of confusion and aversion, it will struggle to revive itself. Lib Dem policies: liked most by the Left All LD voters Very/fairly left-wing voters Very/fairly right-wing voters 2. Policies. Could clear policies solve the problem with ideology? Some Lib Dem policies are undoubtedly popular, espe- Net support* for policies the Lib Dems want: cially lifting low-paid workers out of tax (which the coalition Reduce income tax Annual ‘mansion tax’ Elect most members government is doing) and imposing an annual “mansion tax” on for low-paid workers on £2m+ homes of House of Lords the most expensive homes (which the Conservatives are resist- 75 42 30 ing). But the public don’t share the Lib Dems’ enthusiasm for 83 41 45 the European Union or overseas aid. By an even more decisive 87 73 47 margin, most voters want a sharp fall in immigration. Indeed this view is shared by most of those who still say they would vote 68 8 -2 Lib Dem. Support for policies the Lib Dems oppose: So far, so normal: it’s common for parties to embrace a range Reduce immigration Reduce overseas aid Withdraw UK from EU of policies, some of which the public like and some they don’t. 61 46 8 But here’s the rub. With every policy position we tested, the people who turn out to be the keenest on the Lib Dem stance are 29 -4 -48 those who describe themselves as “very left-wing.” This means 16 -9 -41 that the party is sending out conflicting messages. Judged by its 88 81 52 policies it is well to the left; judged by its continuing partnership with the Conservatives, it veers to the right. *Net support = % support minus % opposed Sadly for the party, it seems that right-of-centre voters look at Call for Cable? the party through the prism of policies, and don’t like what they Which of these senior ministers do you respect most? see, while left-of-centre voters look at its alliance with theT ories Lib Dem voters Lib Dem deserters and are equally put off. A lot will ride on what the Lib Dems Don't 51 Vince Cable 28 Don't do in the run-up to the next election, and whether they can rid know 4 know 6 themselves of these twin millstones. They need policies that help 11 William Hague 19 them to convey a new and clear narrative. % 2 David Cameron 4 % None 35 19 Nick Clegg 2 3. Brand. The confusion of ideology and policy has crippled None 11 George the Lib Dem brand. Most people—and a huge majority of Lib George Osborne 0 3 Theresa May 2 Osborne 2 Dem deserters—say they don’t know what the party stands for, and think it has broken its promises. Less than one voter in A tainted brand three agrees that “by entering the coalition, the Lib Dems have All Conservative voters Lib Dem voters Lib Dem deserters managed to get real liberal policies put into action.” Most of Percentage who agree that: these are either already Lib Dem supporters or pro-coalition I'm no longer Lib Dems have Lib Dems did the Lib Dems have put Tory voters. sure what the broken promises responsible thing real Liberal policies Lib Dems and betrayed by entering govt. put into action by The one positive “brand” quality that has a resonance stand for supporters at a time of crisis entering coalition beyond coalition supporters is the proposition that “the Lib Dems did the responsible thing by entering government at a 67 58 41 29 time of crisis.” This provides some opening for the party at the 60 41 69 52 next election. It might be able to win back some votes by strik- 25 24 93 77 ing a serious, almost sombre, note about the problems Britain 77 75 37 25 faces, and how its ministers have put country before party to tackle them. prospect september 2012 death by coalition? 23

4. Leadership. Elections are not just about the message. They “strong” and “sticks to what he believes in,” and asked peo- are also, increasingly, about the messenger. Is Clegg the right ple to tick off the ones that apply to each party leader. The fig- man to lead his party into the next election? We asked people to ures for Clegg were bad among the general public, and worse say which of six senior ministers they respected most. We offered among Lib Dem deserters. Fully 71 per cent of the latter think four Tories (David Cameron, George Osborne, William Hague, none of the attributes apply. Just 1 per cent think he’s strong, Theresa May) and two Lib Dems (Nick Clegg, Vince Cable). 2 per cent think he’s decisive and 4 per cent reckon he “sticks The immediately striking thing is that neither Tory nor Lib to what he believes in.” In only two of the attributes does his Dem voters place their own party leader first. But whereas image rating creep into double figures, and then only just: 12 Hague (40 per cent among Tories) just narrowly beats Cam- per cent of deserters think he’s honest, and 12 per cent again say eron (37 per cent), Cable (51 per cent among Lib Dem support- he’s charismatic. ers) trounces Clegg (19 per cent). (The results also confirm There are, of course, still almost three years to go to the next Osborne’s unpopularity: only 2 per cent of Tory voters pick him.) election (assuming the coalition lasts the distance). Much can Cable also has some traction among Lib Dem deserters. Four change in that time. To some extent, the Lib Dems are victims out of ten don’t pick any of the six; among those who do choose of the phenomenon from which they have benefited so much in one of them, Cable is way out in front, with Hague a distant sec- the past: the government’s mid-term blues. However, unless they ond and the rest nowhere. manage to solve their deep-seated problems over ideology, pol- Separate analysis of one of YouGov’s tracker questions con- icy, brand and leadership—either by changing them or selling firmsC legg’s poor standing, especially among the 4m Lib Dem them far more effectively—the Liberal Democrats face a torrid deserters. We listed eight positive attributes, such as “honest,” time at the next election. What should they do? Stick with the coalition, quit or split? james macintyre & james elwes

here was a joke going around Westminster in 2010, when was the Lib Dems’ acquiescence in the debate over university tui- the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition with the Con- tion fees. Before the election the party had said it would oppose a servatives. If you phoned Lib Dem headquarters, it ran, rise in fees, but once in power, the coalition raised the cap on fees and asked for a copy of the party’s manifesto, the answer to £9,000. Twas: “Sorry, we’ve sold out.” At the time, even newly empowered It is not the first time that the Lib Dems have found themselves Lib Dem Cabinet ministers allowed themselves a chuckle at the trailing alarmingly in the polls. Senior party figures are quick to gag. Now, they aren’t laughing. point out that there are two and half years before the next elec- Nick Clegg is paying the price of his decision in 2010 to join in tion, which gives time for a comeback. But this is an optimistic a coalition with a party with very different views from his own on analysis, and the threat of electoral extinction is opening big inter- everything from Europe to immigration to constitutional reform. nal rifts. It was a gamble, the consequences of which are now shaking the It is hard to find a Lib DemMP who will attack Clegg openly. party. On the surface they are loyal. However, party strategists are The Lib Dem record in government has been mixed. There highly concerned about the erosion of the party’s base. In the May have been successes, such as the raising of the personal income local elections, the party failed to put up a full slate of candidates tax allowance, which will increase to £9,205 from April 2013. The for councils in major cities including Liverpool and Leeds, and party also scored a victory when it managed to block Conservative lost 336 councillors overall. Next year’s county council elections plans for a cut in inheritance tax. There have also been successes and the London borough elections in 2014 threaten the Lib Dems in the introduction of the pupil premium, which commits more with what one senior MP calls “existential wipeout.” The party government money to the schooling of disadvantaged children; faces the possibility of a return to the position it was in before the the restoration of the link between the state pension and earnings; formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1981: unable to chal- and a plan, announced by Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the lenge for power at a local level, let alone a national one. Treasury, to crack down on tax evasion. The opposition is enjoying the spectacle of a coalition in trou- But there have been painful defeats. The “No” vote in the ref- ble. “Ed [Miliband, the Labour leader] may sound publicly sym- erendum to change Britain’s electoral system to the Alternative pathetic, but the dynamic is to watch the Lib Dems squirm as it’s Vote system means that Lib Dem hopes of electoral reform may in Labour’s electoral interests,” says a senior Labour strategist. have been destroyed for a generation. Opposition to the proposed For Clegg, there is every incentive to help David Cameron reforms was encouraged by Conservatives. The Lib Dems also hold the coalition together. If it imploded suddenly, the Lib dropped their objection to the removal of the 50p tax rate for high Dems would be forced to go to the polls with support perhaps not earners, which George Osborne scrapped in this year’s budget. far off its current low levels, with no chance to benefit from an The recent failure to secure House of Lords reform was also a sore improvement in the economy, the perception of future successes, defeat for Clegg and his party. Perhaps the most damaging of all let alone the calculated positioning of a campaign. They could face an electoral meltdown from which they might never recover. James Macintyre is Prospect’s politics editor; James Elwes is deputy editor In those circumstances, the Tories might not be returned with 24 death by coalition? prospect september 2012

a majority. Some Lib Dem strategists have speculated that Clegg Stay with the Coalition will replace Catherine Ashton as the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs before the next election. But that would be Simon Hughes, MP for Bermondsey and Old South- a decision for the European Council and is not something that wark and deputy leader of Liberal Democrats Clegg alone can control. Given that, “Nick’s challenge now is to “In our party there are a few who never come up with imaginative ways of doing deals with Cameron to thought it [coalition] was a good idea prevent revolts in both their respective parties,” says a friend of in the first place and some people who the deputy prime minister. think we ought to go sooner rather The most likely plan, for those around Clegg, is for the two coa- than later. At the highest levels there lition parties not to divorce but to break shortly before the gen- is nobody who thinks [leaving is] the eral election, to campaign separately. But others in the party right thing to do. believe this will jeopardise its future—and their seats. The run-up “Yes we have paid the price. Both to the party conference has brought a frenzy of talk about ways to [coalition parties] paid the price ear- improve the chances of survival, as we set out below. lier this year for the Tory decision to drop the top rate of tax. I think they understand that too Exit the coalition now now. Our job is to show that we don’t bottle it. Outside the central group of party leaders, some Lib Dem MPs “Nothing can change the coalition agreement. I can’t are musing about the “nuclear option” of withdrawing from the imagine there won’t be proposals to add to it. As we speak coalition. They say their only chance of avoiding electoral oblivion there are people beavering away at just such proposals. is to “back-pedal,” sooner rather than later, towards the kind of “There are members of the party that feel nervous. Suc- distinct, centre-left position that filled a gap in theB ritish politi- cess is difficult. There are a few who say we should never cal market under Charles Kennedy. But the chances of this are have joined the Tories. There may be some more.” dismissed by leading figures in the party. It is understandable that senior figures are keen to quell any Susan Kramer, Liberal Democrat peer thought of a sudden splitting of the coalition. But in terms of “Most of us have enough sense to rec- brute political calculation, some Lib Dems conclude that the next ognise we are now in coalition. So we election will be best fought with as much space between them- recognise the need for compromise. A selves and the Tories as possible. If economic conditions continue lot of us feel let down by the Conserv- to worsen, this view may gather support. atives over things like House of Lords Simon Hughes, deputy leader, concedes that: “There are mem- reform. bers of the party that feel nervous—success is difficult.T here are a “At the beginning of the coalition, few who say we should never have joined the Tories. Some people every media question was can you tell think we ought to go sooner rather than later. At the highest levels, us the date of the election—ie, the col- there is nobody who thinks it’s the right thing to do.” For Hughes, lapse is so close, when is it coming? So it is preferable to be in power and with influence rather than being we wanted to make clear that the coalition can work. At the “on the outside carping at a Tory minority government.” very start, we were at the point where the financial market The Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard has also detected was so fragile and that looks very different now. As time has no urge within the party to break from the coalition. Rennard, gone on and everyone has gone past that, people have felt who was formerly the chief executive of the party and also its chief freeer to express differences.” by-election coordinator says that “the level of support for ending the coalition is negligible. People understand the electoral arith- Chris Rennard, Liberal Democrat peer metic and economic necessity; these make it a political necessity.” “The Lib Dems must show the difference that they have made in govern- Cable for leader ment and also show what would have A change of leadership before the next election is a possibility. gone wrong with a majority Conserva- Nick Clegg will forever be seen as an ally of the Conservatives, tive or Labour government. despite his occasional public disputes with the Tories. “Even a “Lib Dems are used to poor polling stopped clock is right twice a day,” is how one Lib Dem MP on positions. The party has been through the social-democratic wing of the party describes those disagree- periods like this before. We do not have ments. The MP’s verdict: “it is too little, too late.” a proportional representation system Under one scenario floated by frustrated Lib DemMP s, Vince and so numbers of seats do not tie in Cable would take over in time to lead the party in the next elec- with the rise and fall of the national vote. So don’t panic. tion. Despite the Tory-led fiscal policy whichC able has helped to “I don’t sense any possibility of the party splitting or underpin, the Lib Dem rank and file adore him. something like that. The level of support for ending the coali- Some party members still hold out for Chris Huhne to stand tion is negligible. People understand the electoral arithmetic for the leadership again. Huhne stood against Clegg in 2007, cam- and economic necessity; these make it a political necessity. paigning to the left of his rival and losing out by only 511 votes. He “The opposition is much more in the Tories—on the Tory is a heavyweight who stood up to the Tories when in Cabinet until right, who want Cameron to be more anti-gay, anti-immi- last year, arguing openly against George Osborne in Cabinet over grant. The Conservative party is divided on these issues.” Tory tactics in the Alternate Vote referendum. However, his career is on hold, and he is writing a book. He tells friends he is “out of Ancient Modern EGYPT & ARABIA

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Plus, FREE £200 On Board Spend per cabin To/from Southampton, via Gibraltar Rising from the desert, magnifi cent every evening, a fi tness centre and spa, Dubai is breathtaking to witness. And Jacuzzis and pools, a library, lectures and there’s no better way to get a taste of the talks. However you enjoy this historic Alexandria city’s extravagant lifestyle – along with adventure, with Balmoral as your Suez Canal Aqaba so many other fascinating destinations home-from-home and our long-serving Safaga Dubai – than with like-minded guests on a experienced staff looking after you, you’ll Sharm Muscat Fred. Olsen cruise. Sailing the Red Sea be travelling in true style and comfort. el-Sheikh will then take you to Alexandria, Egypt where history is everywhere to be seen. Great value prices Salalah There are guided Shore Tours to see the from just £2,049pp exceptional Pyramids of Giza, while lunch A Fred. Olsen cruise is always superb on the River Nile is also a tempting way value for your money with so much Departs 4th April 2013 to enjoy the destination. included in the price: comfortable 23 nights – Balmoral – L130151 en-suite cabin accommodation; leisure From London, returns Southampton Along the way there’s a Crusader fortress facilities; fi ne dining; fl ights & transfers; in Jordan, beautiful beaches in Sharm entertainment; and £200 FREE On Inside cabins – £2,049pp el-Sheikh, an ancient souk and Grand Board Spend per cabin too. Not only will Outside cabins – £2,354pp Mosque (one of the world’s largest) in you benefi t from great value, you will Balcony cabins – pp Muscat and Salalah has a magnifi cent never forget the fantastic experiences £3,484 Royal Palace to view. There’s lots to you’ll enjoy on this cruise, made all the Suites – £4,024pp be discovered ashore and you’ll fi nd more special in the warmer, friendlier Includes £200 On Board Spend per cabin Balmoral just as much to do on board: bars and atmosphere of . Hurry – best cabins selling fast lounges, live music and entertainment To book, contact your travel agent, call 0800 0355 132 or visit fredolsencruises.com Call weekdays 8-8, Sat 9-5 & Sun 10-4

Fares are per person, based on twin occupancy of the lead-in cabin of category, subject to availability. Offers may be withdrawn or amended at any time without prior notice, are subject to availability and cannot be applied retrospectively. On Board Spend is per cabin, non-refundable and non-transferable. Bookings are subject to Terms and Conditions as detailed in the Fred. Olsen Cruises Worldwide 2013/14 brochure. Cruise description includes optional Shore Tours and activities which are not included and are subject to charge and availability. Some ports may be at anchor, intermediate days are at sea. We reserve the right to amend itineraries for operational reasons. E&OE.

FOC54212_Advert _Prospect mag fv.indd 1 11/07/2012 17:29 reach out. theLib Dems. of the exchequer, remain deeply, tribally hostile to of Labour, led by “predator”sectionsbankers.Largeespeciallyon is said to be impressedsaidbetois by occasionallyto alliancenowtalkingwithis2010andLabour in was keener than any of his colleagues to form an mon. make sense as the two parties have much in com afuture Lib Dem–Labour alliance, which would leadershipDemLibof would openthetodoor cannothe work with E Team up with Labour set of hands—if a fresh start were needed.”economy, then he could be seen to have a clean becausehe has not been so identified with the try,” he said. “ lapse of the standing of the party in the coun analysis. “ of a leadership challenge. nard, the Liberal Democrat peer, dismiss all talk ership.” Hejust wants to be senior under a Vince lead Vince,ing shott’s whispers too seriously. “ oiiin an aant taking against warns politician u thinking.ful A “withinyear.”a that he expects his former bossC to be leader talk [of the leadership] puts people off.”T Hughesanswers “No. Nor would itbe wise atall. 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All the evidence is that this able’s spokesman, telling been friends has d T However,as O However Lord S T S imFarron, the Lib Dem president and the party’s most out M ome senior people are dismissive of the idea. o attentiono focusedis on he only other figure who has been floated as a future leader ne senior Liberal Democrat offered a stark lbn, aors edr hs said leader, Labour’s hasiliband, C O be a aor onilr n h 1980s, the in councillor Labour a able, Other senior Lib Dems, like P range P ryce was driving his car, when it was clocked speeding. eople have got to wake up to the col M B thw s promoting himself.atthew is B ut it is hard to find a single B ecause of [ B R M C T ut E ook” group: that is Lib Dems on the right of the ennardpointsout,“the greatest abinet-level Dem Lib hismay well wishbe E iliband. O dDavey, the energy and climate change sec M d akeshott, February until last C B C iliband’sown instincts are to hrisHuhne. “It ismistakea to alls, the shadow chancellor legg. C T M able’s] history and he businesshesecretary B iliband’spositioning, C ut a changeaut B able. y promot O C ake S hris incehebecame business - - MP S - R imon en who believes he has - - - - - d eath by coalition? eathby - - - Labour, hoping for economic recovery and a share in its electoral T Go half way Huhne and Vince be National Government’s economic plans. 1931 the Liberal party broke up over the erals”whowould stay with the lition. to break with those Lib Dems who remain committed to the coa their only option is to see things throughDem peer. to the“ general election.” chance to make a break if and when it comes,” sayscommittedareso a seniorthetocoalition Lib thatthey refuse seizetothis “ Split the party that they have “sold out.” Dem the danger for the Lib Dems of beingatives,” perceived and runningas subordinate. to Labour for salvationdanger would is onlythat increasewe are seen as subsets of Labour, or of the rewards, while courting the support they have lost on the left. In T this scenario, they would withdraw from full coalition with the during votes on government budgets and confidence motions. he Lib Dems can seek a middle position between the supply”—a technical parliamentary agreementT to give support Lib Dems that the hequestion whetheris C P In that case, the left of the party will need to decide whether Doing a deal with Labour would be a high-risk move, but Lib ories, but would agree to provide them with “confidence and uncharitable partners, but that a dramatic exit from govern T arty insiders expect the key plotters for a breakaway group to harles Kennedy, who opposed the coalition’s formation, T S MP party, until its merger in 1988 with the he party’s upper echelons say stay with the coalition. David umn in ment would do immense harm to the party. “We recognise T teel,peer,LibDemnowa was leaderthe ofoldLiberal his compromise position chimes with a sense among many Stay with the coalition ourside of the bargain, but that’s not the way the hiswould mean a split between them and “coalition lib look at this.” mitmentto proportional representation, an unwritten the need for compromise,” says s now believe it is their only way of answering the charge atives over things like House of Lords reform. We keep nomic affairs. “A lot of us feelDemocrat let downpeer, bywhose the expertise is in financial and eco attachment to the principle of coalition is in the par T ty’sDNA. hey appear to me to have convinced themselves that The Times h wdr neet” t ol b contradictory be would It interest.” wider the o Liberalfor C because they are unwilling to make the sorts able. of compromise that their desired voting sys C tem inevitably entails. onservatives may well have been unfair and C , he argued that, “ Stay in coalition, but differentiate ompromisesare therefore essential in C ent. “We must make sure that we havewethat“Wemakesuremust leggandhis allies inthe MP says o bcm the become not T t wl aa fo coalition away from walk to s T ories. i ise f differentiation of issue his R nad “e r differ are “We ennard. prospect september 2012 september prospect C T S onservative-dominated usan Kramer, a Liberal hereprecedent:ais in B S ecause of our com D P C . 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A Labour view: joining, a minority Conservative govern- appropriate, with Labour and other oppo- End the Coalition, join us ment would not have been an enticing sition parties. prospect. Yet both would have been more For its part, Labour would be well In 22 Days in May, palatable for their own supporters. advised to welcome the Lib Dems as prod- his account of the My strong conviction is that there is igal sons who have returned to the fold, coalition negotia- only one rational course now open to the rather than cold-shouldering them for tions, David Laws, Lib Dems. It is to disengage from the coa- their previous apostasy. Despite their the Lib Dem MP and lition well before the general election. The present large lead in the polls, it is all too former chief secre- earlier they do this, the greater the chance likely that they will need the support of tary to the Treasury, that they might detoxify themselves in the even a sadly diminished Lib Dem party claims that the Lib eyes of at least a segment of their former in order to govern. For the Lib Dems, this Dems were well-pre- voters. The actual issue on which they would provide an opportunity to recreate pared. Yet the truth choose to resign, though significant, is of themselves as a progressive party, able to is that whatever the secondary importance. What is crucial is form a partnership more in accord with its contents of the coa- that they should stick to their new found traditional principles. lition agreement, things were likely to go intention to vote down the proposed redis- It is evident that Labour would poten- wrong. For a left-of-centre party to join a tribution, and reduction in the number, of tially gain considerably from what I pro- right-wing government is just asking for seats. This is essential to the (relative) sur- pose, and readers may reasonably suspect trouble. vival of the party, which would lose quite that this is, at least in part, my motivation Neither of the other two alternatives disproportionately from its imposition. for putting it forward. Yet it is my conten- facing the Lib Dems in 2010 was partic- Once they have resigned, the Lib Dems tion that it would be in the mutual interest ularly attractive. A coalition with Labour should use the time remaining in the of both parties. and a clutch of minority parties was math- present parliament to build up a record Dick Leonard is a former Labour MP and ematically fragile and unstable. Offering of constructive opposition to the govern- political journalist. He has recently completed conditional support for, but not actually ment, not disdaining to co-ordinate, where a dual biography of Disraeli and Gladstone has become stronger—Nick will aim to make this point this Of all these plans, staying with the coalition is the most likely September.” for now. It has the weight of the party leadership behind it, Some feel that an attempt by the Liberal Democrats to differ- although that comes with an exhortation to Clegg to begin draw- entiate will be gladly mirrored by the Conservative party, which ing clear distinctions between the party and the Conservatives. also wants a more distinct identity within the coalition. “The Those around Vince Cable may be able to put an uncomfortable opposition to [the coalition] is much more in the Tories—on the degree of pressure on Clegg, given the deep support in the party Tory right—who want Cameron to be more anti-gay, more anti- for the business secretary, and the never-dying speculation about immigrant,” says Rennard. “What we need to do is show that the whether he would make a better leader. At the same time, Clegg coalition is a professional relationship. It’s a professional, busi- cannot afford to antagonise theT ory leadership, itself under pres- nesslike relationship. We must show the differences in popular sure to take a tougher line on immigration—despite the Olympics policies concerning tax and education, spending, environmen- —and on spending. Clegg’s strongest weapon in keeping discipline tal progress.” is the fear by many—probably most—of his MPs of the annihila- The main way to show this difference is on the economy.C able tion that might follow an early collapse of the coalition or a for- stated in March, in a letter to Cameron, that he felt the treasury mal split in the party. His greatest vulnerability is that some of his lacked a coherent growth strategy and that the government had party fear that things can’t get much worse, and that he is their failed to present a “compelling vision” for Britain. Senior party weakest link. strategists say they envisage a “window of opportunity” if George Osborne’s plan is seen to be failing, with debt continuing to rise and markets beginning to lose confidence.T his would allow them to put space between the Conservatives’ economic policies and their own. “We chose the wrong issue [Lords reform] with which to have a stand-up row with the Tories,” says once close to Vince Cable. “If we are to break free of the coalition, it has to be on the economy.” The next spending review, which is due to be published before the end of 2013, is the likeliest point of departure. Danny Alex- ander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, backs siding with the Tories. But Cable privately believes Osborne’s strategy is failing and wants to wriggle away from it. Kramer emphasises the extent to which the coalition was forged in the heat of the financial crisis. At the time, she suggests, “any story that suggested that government was about to collapse was very dangerous for the economy.” The party was perhaps too keen to compromise on too many critical policy “It’s about the free flow of information, points at the outset. although we’d like to charge people for it” 28 prospect september 2012 Mo and me British Somalis must integrate to succeed ismail einashe © press association images association press © Somali-born Mo Farah celebrates with the Union flag after winning his first Olympic gold medal in the 10,000 metres

e’ve never met. I can barely keep on the tread- pockets. And Mo’s greatest success lies in his full embrace of Brit- mill for more than 10 minutes. But our lives ishness—something that is alas all too rare for young Somalis. have overlapped uncannily. Moreover, he is living proof that hard graft can bring success. Born in Mogadishu, Mo Farah, now 29, We were the generation that arrived here aged 8, 10, 12. Many spent a portion of his childhood near Gabiley of us came with memories of war all too fresh in our minds. Our Win Somaliland, a town not far from Hargeisa, where I was born stories were forged in the disintegration of the Somali state and lived. Mo, so the stories go, would run errands for his family. amidst the carnage of civil war. Mo and I survived this. Like many But his talent had to be nurtured in Britain. Without this he may other Somalis we were forced to flee our homes and become refu- never have got the chance. This double life is I suspect one reason gees in Ethiopia and Kenya. We were robbed of what we here call why it was so emotional for him as he stood on the podium as the childhood. For us, being a child didn’t mean sandcastles, toys and winner of the gold medal for the 10,000 metres on an unforget- board games. It was about gunfire, hunger and fear. table Saturday evening in August, as the national anthem roared We had little in the way of education, and were plunged into through the Olympic Stadium. unfamiliar British life without manuals or guidebooks. We were For me, watching on my telly, this first victory was a great thrown into existing zones of poverty in the inner cities, confused, moment of affirmation and acceptance. His second gold, in the alienated and unable to make sense of our new homes. 5000 metres one week later, was momentous, breathtaking. He Mo Farah’s story, like my own, should not have ended well. had become one of the greatest British Olympians. And, for once, Supermarket counter or Feltham Young Offenders Institute the attention was on us Somalis for the right reasons—the best of was the likely outcome. When you’re a child in those circum- us on screens beaming to millions across the country. No longer stances you do not know your potential. There are no role would we be only the invisible moving shadows crowded in urban models: you do not have a parent with a degree, who is fluent in English, able to provide you with economic security and Ismail Einashe is a Somali-born British writer and activist guide you along the way. prospect september 2012 mo and me 29

New communities only get a few chances before a collec- She had brought a hen for me. In Britain the pounds piled on. tive reputation precedes you. Somalis have not had a very good I grew up in Kentish Town in the 1990s. My family was one of start. The statistics show: the worst rates of unemployment of the first, but other Somalis began to arrive in large numbers. I any minority group; only three per cent with any higher educa- often remember those days with some fondness.T hey were inno- tion; large families crammed into small flats; a swelling youth cent times before the gangs, drug wars and murdered friends. population; and absent fathers addicted to qat, a plant that I recall all too well what happened next. Moving into an area grows in east Africa and which the men chew to get high. As a with much poverty and an existing white working class com- report for the department for communities and local govern- munity was not easy. We had to fight our corner. Tell them they ment stated, Somali life in Britain was characterised by a cycle couldn’t treat us like they wanted. Mothers would get fearful of of “isolation, poverty and depression.” their children being on their own. To avoid being beaten up or getting into fights we’d walk together in large groups to school. omalis are some of Britain’s oldest and newest Laughing and fooling around—many of us were still master- migrants. Small numbers arrived in the 19th ing English—speaking in this hybrid Somali-English mixed century in cities like Cardiff and Liverpool in with street language and hip-hop inspired swagger. and London’s East End, mostly as seamen We’d fend for ourselves—from the local sports ground Swho could share in this island’s naval history. It is said via McDonald’s and the chicken shop—at every opportu- Somalis even fought alongside Nelson in the battle of nity. First, it was Somalis against non-Somalis and then it Trafalgar. slowly it became Somali on Somali. Today, the country we escaped from is a byword for anarchy and mayhem, eas- “Mo and me were a ily topping league tables of the world’s failing states. The majority of those lucky minority: we who fled continue to live as refu- not only survived gees. Mo and me were among a lucky minority: we not only survived but we but we escaped, escaped, starting new lives in faraway places like Britain, the Netherlands and starting new lives in Denmark. places like Britain” No one really knows how many Soma- lis there are in Britain today. The Office for From those innocent groups has come National Statistics puts our number at something much darker. From street corners 108,000, up from 2001’s figure of 43,500. of rocks and sticks to whole areas of knives But this only records Somali-born, like me and guns. A generation of young men I and Mo. “Somali” is not a separate ethnic started out with in the mid-1990s gradu- checkbox like Bengali or Pakistani. The ated to this. I began to see my old mates umbrella “Black African” barely contains from the madrassa and school on street the vast differences between, say, Ghana- corners in Camden pushing drugs. Soon I ian middle-class migrants and Somalis was seeing them in the news. Not a night who arrive mostly as refugees and asylum would go by without a fight breaking out seekers. Most estimates place the numbers on the estate I lived on. Police sirens, screams, at 250,000 to 300,000. the sound of mopeds. Mo began his British life in Hounslow in The combination of boredom and youth 1991. When I came here at the end of 1994 creates a combustible mix. For us there were as a 10-year-old, I too was illiterate, lacking no summer breaks in France, seaside holidays, prior experience of schooling and unable visits to museums—it was a long summer of to read or write in my native tongue. Very MTV Base and football, crammed in tight few Somalis could, as Somali has only been urban spaces, families of six to eight people in a written language since 1972. Mo got into two and three bedroom council homes. fights just like I did. He found it hard to The murder of Mahir Osman, 18 years settle. Because of the conflict, many of us old, in 2006 was a defining moment. He was had never known stability. a friend, a few years younger than me, and I Unlike Mo I had no natural talent. I remember playing and laughing with him at was a chubby kid who enjoyed ice cream our local Somali-run madrassa in Camden. and doughnuts too much. I was once like He was known as “Smiley” because he so many other Somali children, stick- always smiled. Like so many other young thin with a bloated belly, sick with the men I knew, he ended up part of the Centric malaria that killed my older brother, Crew, a gang that started in Camden in and it had made my mother obsessed the 1990s. The gang’s initially Somali- with my weight. Before settling in Brit- only membership was drawn from across ain, she would force me to swallow two the borough. They became involved with raw eggs every morning to fatten me up. low-level drug distribution, the first step 30 mo and me prospect september 2012 © peter marshall peter © British-Somali women watching the Olympic flame passing through Stratford, London, in June

selling some weed to a tourist or to one of the private school dled in hoodies under Camden bridges, grime music blaring out kids who lived in Hamsptead and would come to Camden Lock of their phones, I was taking part in a new adventure. At 16 I seeking nirvana. got the requisite five GCSE A to B grades and began attending From this they moved to robbery and anti-social behaviour. Camden School for Girls (which has a mixed-sex sixth form). But before 2005 they were barely known outside Camden. They The school housed students who had attended the most elite were the kids I grew up with, my age, 15–19—surely harmless. schools in Britain—City of London School, Westminster, High- It was after 2005 that they became infamous mainly for their gate. I’d see the boys from my past and they’d be taken aback to clashes with the North London Somalis, a rival gang operating find me having a latte onC amden High Street, sorting through out of Wood Green and Tottenham. indie music in the bootleg record stores, buying Che T-Shirts This was the start of something ugly. Now, gangs became because I thought it was cool. We who’d started out identically the norm. Story after story would come of stabbings and beat- had grown distantly apart. We had grown far apart. At about ings to murders—from Mahir’s murder to that of Sharma’arke the same time, Mo Farah was practising his athletics, travelling “Sharky” Hassan, shot at close range in Camden in 2008, aged even to Florida to compete in the Youth Olympics. 17. Somalis became all too visible for all the wrong reasons. Fear Mo and me had left the gangs behind, but at least for me struck the community. There was fighting betweenS omalis and they were never that far away. Smiley’s death came in retaliation Bengalis, Somalis versus Irish. At sixth form I’d get calls from for the attempted murder of 21-year-old Mohammed Nur, family members, saying “avoid Camden tonight, the Bengalis who was attacked in a car park at a McDonald’s in Haringey. are out looking to stab any Somali.” But I recall not heeding His Centric Crew assailants hit him with concrete slabs and those warnings. left him permanently disabled. They travelled there using Mahir, Smiley, was the sweetest boy. He was murdered in free Oyster cards that Ken Livingstone had given to young the most barbaric fashion. That January day in 2006, up to 40 Londoners. Oddly, five years earlier, I had helped organise a boys of the North London Somalis travelled from Tottenham youth conference in Camden Town Hall prior to London’s first to Camden seeking out any Centric Crew members. In broad mayoral election. One of our demands was that all candidates daylight, they chased Smiley, stamped on him, kicked him, should support a scheme to create free transportation for punched him. Witnesses reported hearing screams of “Stab London’s young people. I needed transport as a teenager, him in the heart” and “Kill, kill.” In 19 seconds he received 21 working evenings at Poundstretcher and getting up at 5am stab wounds. His killers escaped on the number 253 bus, police every Saturday to sell fruit at Borough Market in order to earn catching only 25 of them. Most of them have never been brought the £35 that would see me through the week. to justice. Only four men were convicted of the murder and 11 As a teenager I threw myself into working with the Children’s others, including Fasil Wangita, the son of Idi Amin, were con- Society, and ended up working for several years on projects such victed on lesser charges. as “Listen Up” and “Live N Direct,” a youth environmental Going into a tough secondary school in Somers Town, I ini- campaign focused on sustainable living in inner cities by tially had the same problems as other Somali children. I should promoting, amongst other things, composting. A photo of me not have done well, and at first I did not. But I was a curious with worms in my hand and my mouth wide open made it into and naturally bright child. While my former classmates sat hud- the Camden New Journal, much to the amusement of my friends. prospect september 2012 mo and me 31

At the time, I kept myself busy without knowing why. I just liked baggage of their parents’s generation, and to connect with the it. At one point, I was interviewed for Radio 4—I didn’t know lives of other young Muslims, particularly those from the subcon- what Radio 4 was then, but the next day my headteacher said tinent. Yet the vulnerable young are also drawn to radicalisation. he heard me speak and that I should continue working on my Take the Oxford Brookes university student, the first British- English. That really stuck with me, so I began to pronounce my Somali suicide bomber in Somalia. He was from Ealing and in words as my teachers did. 2007 blew himself up in Baidoa, in the south of the country. Mo Farah, at ease with his place in British society, provides the best o found it hard to reconcile his Somali background antidote to this. with his new-found British identity. Torn between Many who arrived here in the early 1990s expected to return cultures, he was socially isolated in an invisi- eventually to their homeland. With the situation in the Horn ble community. Mo might well have gone off the of Africa still dangerous 20 years on, many Somalis in Britain Mrails had it not been for the support of Alan Watkinson, his PE now realise that this may be their permanent home. Somalis teacher, mentor, and best man at his wedding. He has found are mostly refugees and asylum seekers, so we did not come to happiness with Tania, his teenage sweetheart, and Rihanna, fill a gap in the labour market, as previous cohorts of migrants their daughter. Tania is expecting twins any day now. After his did. Somali leaders in Britain wonder how to follow the success victory in the 5000 metres, Mo said his two gold medals would of other migrant groups. But the template put down by previ- be dedicated to them. ous cohorts is no longer working. We need to integrate more than Athletics was the vehicle for his journey out of isolation, just those earlier groups of migrants have done. Somalis are known as education and youth activism would prove to be my way out. I for their entrepreneurial spirit—Africa’s largest money-trans- too chose to integrate. I took every opportunity to get out beyond fer business is Somali-owned and operated from London. Soma- the walls of the community—to see and hear unfamiliar cultures, lis have already established thriving businesses—internet cafés, spending all my spare time on weekends in the local library and restaurants and taxi companies. This bodes well for their long- in theatre workshops. This “searching” often got me into trou- term integration. The rate of inter-racial marriage, where Soma- ble and set me apart from my peers, often making me a target lis marry people from other races, is growing too—look at Mo! for bullying. Some Somalis have a phrase for people like Mo and His triumph shows how a community once invisible, mov- me—those who are seen to be “acting English.” They call us “Fish ing like soundless shadows on street corners, is finally becoming and Chips.” There’s a tendency within the community to fight more visible in positive ways. It should not be forgotten that my this cultural curiosity. The older generation fears the younger will generation of Somalis fled one of the worst civil wars of the 20th lose its culture and religion. Parents scold their children for not century—a war that continues to blight the most comprehen- speaking Somali at home. English is positively discouraged—in sively failed state in the world. Mo has become a British hero, but stark contrast to Ghanaian and Nigerian migrants who speak to he has not forgotten these origins—he regularly returns to Soma- their children only in English. lia, and runs the Mo Farah foundation, which provides aid to mil- Some traditions do endure. Qat is tolerated, and there have lions at risk of starvation and disease in East Africa. We should been a number of reported cases of girls being subjected to be proud of his success, and proud to see ourselves as part of this female genital mutilation, where the external parts of their gen- community—but, like Mo, we must must first and foremost see italia are cut off.T his is common practice in Somalia, but illegal ourselves as individuals, and as British. in Britain. But in 2009, The Foundation for Women’s Health, His success is great for Somalis and for Britain, too. He’s the Research and Development reported that an estimated 70,000 best face of us, but his achievements are all the more remarka- women in the UK had undergone the procedure. Girls are still ble because he is deeply unrepresentative of the current wave of expected to play a role at home, providing their mothers with young Somalis. The problem is we don’t have enough like him. support. Attitudes to women in the community hamper their If Somalis are to overcome the real problems they have, then we integration. Somalis have high rates of lone female parents. must find ways to create more Moes. Perhaps his success may The majority are dependent on social benefits. Even when the inspire his generation, and the next. fathers are there, they’re often distant. A number spend time in qat cafés. There is a sense that Somali men lose their honour if they are unable to be breadwinners for the family. For young men unable to overcome the memory of war, there are no male role models. To compensate for this vacuum, they indulge in hyper-masculine behaviour—using the cloak of a gangster rap that is alien to their Somali parents and serves to widen the generational distance. Meanwhile, there has been a broader religious awakening among the young. We come from a society where Islam was rooted in our culture. Growing up, I recall women would wear bright, colourful, traditional clothing, such as diracs and coan- tinos, and diverse styles of hijabs—some were covered and some were not. But how Somalis in Britain practice Islam has changed in accordance with global developments. Many have adopted Gulf standards, such as the black niqab—my sister now wears one, like so many other young women I grew up with. Embrace of different forms of Islam has allowed them to avoid the cultural 32 prospect september 2012 © getty images getty © It’s Florida, stupid The outcome of the presidential election could be decided by the Sunshine State—again diane roberts

s the great baseball player and master tautologist Timor, declared that the “basic international requirements for a Yogi Berra remarked, “it’s like déja vu all over fair election are missing in Florida.” Fidel Castro called Florida again.” This year’s presidential contest between a “banana republic.” The rest of the world began to refer to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney threatens to the state as “FloriDUH.” The result of this year’s presidential become a replay of Florida’s inglorious election election could come down to Florida once more and the way it is Aimbroglio of 2000, those heady five weeks when the state counted arrived at could be just as unsatisfactory as in 2000. and recounted votes, chased butterfly ballots, and examined Thanks to improved voting technology, Florida no longer pregnant chads to figure out who had actually won: George W has chads to dimple, dangle or otherwise, and happily, the but- Bush or Al Gore. It was not an edifying spectacle. Jimmy Carter, terfly ballot is extinct. But Florida has not become the model the former president whose Atlanta-based Carter Center sends of democracy all parties promised post-2000. Both Democrats election observers to the likes of Paraguay, Nicaragua and East and Republicans anticipate trouble on 6th November, election day, and perhaps beyond. Bill Daley, the former White House Diane Roberts is a professor at Florida State University chief of staff, has warned theO bama campaign team they’d bet- prospect september 2012 it’s florida, stupid 33 ter marshal their legal forces for a likely recount; Ben Ginsberg, ment of Justice for prosecution.” who worked for George W Bush during the last recount battle, As soon as the law was implemented in May, new voter reg- says Republicans will “have enough lawyers to handle all situa- istration plummeted. While Florida’s population went up in tions” in Florida. Republicans raise the spectre of voter fraud, the past four years, the number of people signing up for a voter with felons and foreigners illicitly swinging the election in favour card, without which they cannot cast a ballot, has gone down by of Democrats and Barack Obama. Democrats say the real prob- 81,000. Several advocacy groups sued. An exasperated-sounding lem is voter suppression, pointing to neo-Jim Crow restrictions federal judge overturned much of the law, saying, “If the goal is imposed by Republicans. All this takes place against the back- to discourage voter registration drives and thus also to make it drop of Florida’s swelling Latino population—in pursuing “ille- harder for new voters to register, this may work. Otherwise there gal” voters, Republicans risk alienating a crucial constituency. is little reason for such a requirement.” In 2000, 12,000 Floridians were wrongly disenfranchised. The private company hired to “clean up” the state’s electoral rolls, nfortunately, the part of the law the judge didn’t throw striking off people who were dead or felons or otherwise ineligi- out allows the state to restrict early voting. Formerly, ble, made a mess of the job. Not that the candidate’s brother Gov- citizens could cast a vote at the county courthouse ernor Jeb Bush or Secretary of State Katherine Harris seemed up to two weeks before the day of the election. This overly concerned. The database was so slipshod that Floridians Uperiod has now been reduced to eight days. Florida’s Republi- with the same birthdate as criminals incarcerated in another can masters claim it’s a money-saving measure and anyway, there state were turned away from polling places. One Johnny Jack- are still eight early voting days. Democrats, however, charge that son, Jr, an upstanding Florida citizen by all accounts, got con- Republicans want to depress turn-out by their voters, especially fused with one John Fitzgerald Jackson, who was serving time in students, the elderly, hourly-wage workers who can’t afford to a Texas prison. Violating the space-time continuum, several hun- be off work for three or more hours standing in an election-day dred people were listed as convicted of felonies some years in the queue, and African Americans. In 2008, 54 per cent of early vot- future. Harris, at the time both Florida’s chief elections officer ers were black. The Sunday before election day when churches and co-chair of George W Bush’s Florida presidential campaign, mobilise “Souls to the Polls” efforts was especially popular.T his was not only nonchalant about these “false positives,” she let it year, voting is also not allowed on the Sunday before election day. be known that she wanted more names to purge, not fewer. While Ion Sancho, who is the elections supervisor of Leon County, Flor- African Americans made up 11 per cent of Florida’s electorate, ida, predicts that, on election day, voters will have to wait several according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York Univer- hours and that precinct workers will be overwhelmed, saying he sity, they comprised nearly half of those removed from the voter fears Florida’s polling locations won’t be able to accommodate lists. Since African Americans favoured Gore over Bush by 85 to the 8m voters projected to turn out in the general election. 15 per cent, it’s a safe bet that if even a quarter of the disenfran- Republicans have not been sympathetic. Mike Bennett, state chised had voted, the election would have had a different result. senator, argued that in Africa “the people in the desert literally As it was, the United States Supreme Court declared Bush the walk two- and three-hundred miles so they can have the opportu- winner in Florida by a total of 537 votes. nity to do what we do, and we want to make it more convenient?” These days, Katherine Harris is a private citizen, and Jeb However blatant these attempts to discourage the Democratic Bush is rumoured to be plotting a political future beyond 2012 vote, watchdog groups say that they’re small beer compared to when his surname may be a bit less toxic. Yet Florida is at it Republicans’ renewed attempts to purge the voter rolls. Last again. Charlie Crist, the moderate Republican (recently turned year, Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, ordered his secretary independent) who replaced Jeb Bush as governor in 2007, had of state to scour the rolls for ineligible voters. He says he merely relaxed Florida’s restrictions on voting by former felons, arguing wants to make sure that everyone who casts a ballot is a genuine that when they had paid their debt to society they should regain citizen of the US and not some border-jumping Mexican or smug- the rights of citizens. When hardliner Rick Scott took office in gled Salvadoran, a dead person or perhaps a cartoon character 2011, he overturned Crist’s more liberal policy—clearly too many (one “Mickey Mouse” did once attempt to register in Orlando, of the wrong sort had been allowed to cast ballots in 2008, giving but failed). A preliminary cull of 182,000 names was dispatched Florida to Barack Obama by 200,000 votes. to the state’s 67 county elections supervisors for verification. It Scott and the Republican-controlled legislature pushed did not take long before they noticed that the list was curiously through new laws making it difficult for non-profit non-parti- light on white people and Republicans and heavy on African san groups such as the League of Women Voters and the Boy Americans, Latinos, and those registered as either independents Scouts to sign people up to vote. Completed registration forms or Democrats. Nevertheless, the supervisors did their jobs and had to be presented at the county election supervisor’s office not while they failed to scare up any members of the Choir Invisible one minute more than 48 hours from when they were signed, on or denizens of Disney World, they did uncover a preponderance pain of prosecution. In Okaloosa County, Florida, the National of dodgy characters such as: Maureen Russo and Manoly Cas- Association for the Advancement of Colored People tried to reg- tro-Williamson, two middle-aged ladies born in the exotic land ister new voters during January’s Martin Luther King Day week- of Ohio; some second world war veterans including a 91-year-old end, only to be threatened with a thousand dollars in fines and fellow named Bill Internicola who won the Bronze Star at the a possible third-degree felony—they failed to deliver their forms Battle of the Bulge; and a great many recently naturalised citi- within 48 hours because the county offices were closed onM on- zens eagerly looking forward to casting their first vote as Ameri- day in observance of the federal holiday. The NAACP was soon cans and rather taken aback to be ordered either to produce their contacted by the state elections chief: “We appreciate you going papers or face jail time. out and registering voters,” the letter read. “However, if you’re The problem with voter fraud (as practised by individual vot- late anymore we’re going to turn this over to the Florida Depart- ers, at least) is that it barely exists. The Brennan Center has 34 it’s florida, stupid prospect september 2012 analysed instances of “voter fraud” over the last four election them, appointing Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto-Rican American, cycles and concludes that instances of it are rarer than being to the Supreme Court and declaring that he would not deport struck by lightning or attacked by a shark. In an attempt to dis- those who were brought to the US illegally as children. Though prove such studies, the Republican National Lawyers Associa- Republicans point to some of their prominent Cuban-Ameri- tion prepared its own finding, a whopping 311 cases of alleged can politicians, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Sena- voter fraud in the US over the past 15 years. Many of those cases tor Marco Rubio to name two from Florida, the party has done were thrown out of court, others involved mistakes (register- itself no favours with its refusal to help with the passage of the ing twice, failing to report a change of address), a very few were DREAM Act, which would allow young undocumented people actually prosecuted. An investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, to join the US military or go to university as legal residents. Nor Florida’s largest newspaper, revealed that of the state’s 11m have Republican-run states such as Alabama and Arizona, with their unabashedly xenophobic new immigration laws, helped. “Voters recently purged in Arizona’s notorious sheriff Joe Arpaio, who described Mexicans as “dirty” and who spent taxpayer money sending his “posse” to Florida included a 91 year old Hawaii to “prove” that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a “fraud,” is currently on trial for detaining Latinos—or people he who won a Bronze Star at the thinks look sort of like Latinos—without probable cause. Even if, Battle of the Bulge” despite the fond dreams of Democrats, the home state of Senator John McCain will not be in play during this election, the public- enrolled voters, 86 non-citizens have been unmasked and 46 of ity surrounding Arpaio, the “your papers, please” legislation, and those may have voted illegally at some point over the past cou- the ban on teaching the history of Latinos in Arizona schools, has ple of decades. No prosecutions have been brought. Not exactly helped drive Latinos firmly into the arms of Democrats. an orgy of criminal behaviour at the ballot box. The Brennan This is frustrating to Republicans who realise their party can- Center concludes: “The voter fraud phantom drives policy that not survive if it remains an angry old white men’s club. After all, disenfranchises actual legitimate voters without a correspond- the US is projected to become a “majority minority” nation by ing actual benefit.” 2060, by which time Latinos will form the single largest ethnic Nevertheless, Republicans remain convinced that the only group. Jeb Bush, recast by default as a “moderate” (he’s also a way Democrats can win elections is by getting illegal aliens to fluent Spanish speaker married to a Mexican American), sug- vote. One Wisconsin state senator recently praised his state’s gested that Mitt Romney needs to ditch the Tea Party rhetoric: stringent new ID standards saying, “we believe the people who “Don’t just talk about Hispanics and say immediately we must cheat are more likely to vote against us.” Many Republicans still have controlled borders. It’s kind of insulting.” believe Barack Obama won Florida in 2008 by “cheating” with The general election is just two months away and what hap- the help of groups such as the now-defunct Association of Com- pens in Florida may depend on what happens in the courts. Vot- munity Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), which focused ing rights groups are suing over access to the polls before election on registering the poor and members of ethnic minorities—and, day; the governor is urging supervisors of elections to keep purg- according to bitter Republicans, illegal immigrant voters. Never ing their lists, though federal law forbids that within 90 days of mind the total lack of evidence; never mind that illegal immi- an election. Because of Florida’s Old South segregationist past— grants usually prefer to keep a low profile and try to avoid doing its unconstitutional disenfranchisement of former slaves in 1877, things that would get them deported or sent to jail. its implementation of poll taxes and literacy tests, its long, hate- Legal immigrants, however, are another matter, and, in Flor- ful history of denying people of colour the vote—the Department ida especially, a legitimate source of Republican worry. The of Justice, under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, will have the final Democrats can count on the African-American vote, the wom- say over the way in which Florida votes. No matter what happens, en’s vote and a substantial amount of votes from Jews and pen- just about everybody believes that the election will come down to sioners. The Republicans know they’ll get most of the vote from whoever gets their voters out—and which votes get counted. white people (or, as Romney’s advisor would have it, “Anglo Sax- ons”), the affluent, anti-governmentT ea Party types and Chris- tian evangelicals. Latino voters will decide who wins Florida. In 2000, Cubans made up the largest group by far of Latinos in Florida. In 2012 there are almost as many Puerto Ricans (who are American citizens) as Cubans. The “I-4 Corridor” (so-called for the motorway which runs across the middle of Florida) has seen its population increase by nearly half a million in the last decade, of which 250,000 are Puerto Rican. Most of them lean Democratic. It used to be that Democrats would barely bother trying to get Cuban votes: Cubans were militantly Republican, revering Ron- ald Reagan for standing up to Fidel Castro. But lately Democrats are making progress: in 2008, Barack Obama won 47 per cent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida. He got more than 60 per cent of the Puerto Rican vote. Recent polls indicate that Latinos in Florida—and nationally—favour Obama by about two to one. Republicans claim that’s only because Obama has pandered to “I see from your application that you’re my grandson” PT Prospect Ad 6AW_1 11/07/2012 16:58 Page 1 Can He?

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Photo © Alan Chin 36 prospect september 2012 An Orthodox challenge Can Israel’s ultra-conservative communities join modern society? gershom gorenberg

he system just isn’t relevant to life,” says Asher lapse. “We could lose the country,” as a leading Israeli economist, Gold. He wears black trousers, a black velvet Dan Ben-David, warns. skullcap, and a pale lavender shirt, one shade At the margins of ultra-Orthodox society itself, a sense of from white, one shade away from the standard impending economic disaster is growing. Yet a change of direc- “ dress of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish male. The tion is fraught with challenges. It requires haredi society to brave other Tfour young men at the table are more circumspect about integration. It requires the state to spend more money, not less, dissidence; they wear white shirts. The café where they’ve chosen on the ultra-Orthodox in the near term. The longer the change is to meet me is in a courtyard one flight down from street level in a delayed, the more politically difficult it will be to carry out. Jerusalem commercial district: a place both public and removed Unless there’s an internal political rebellion in the ultra- from sight, appropriate for scathing words. Orthodox community, the parliamentary power of haredi par- Gold, 25, is talking about the accepted course of ultra-Ortho- ties opposed to reform will keep growing for a simple reason: the dox life in Israel, in which men devote much or all of adulthood haredi proportion of the electorate is climbing. “There is a demo- to religious study rather than to making a living. “At some stage cratic, demographic point of no return,” says Ben-David. a person looks at the situation and says, ‘This just cannot con- The fact that ultra-Orthodox parties have become loyal part- tinue,’” he says. “‘No one is throwing loaves of bread from heaven. ners of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister and leader of the You have to go to work.’” right-wing Likud party, is a further barrier to change. This sum- “The manna,” says Elimelech, another of the men, “isn’t com- mer Netanyahu sacrificed a coalition with the major centrist party, ing down.” Kadima, rather than upset his haredi allies. The short-term pay- “There was an ideal society, a society that can’t exist in the real off of support for his intransigent policies on peace and territory world, and yet it existed,” says a third. trumped seizing an opportunity for bringing the ultra-Orthodox “People lived in a utopia,” says Gold, “until the reality shattered.” into Israel’s economy. It was not an encouraging choice. Other Israelis would dismiss the assertion that ultra-Ortho- Ultra-Orthodox Jews comprise about a tenth of Israel’s popula- dox society was ever a utopia, noting that the manna that feeds tion, depending on how statisticians identify who is haredi. While it comes not from heaven, but from the government, and that too the Israeli population as a whole is expanding at 1.7 per cent a much is still falling. But they would not disagree that ultra-Ortho- year, the haredi community grows 7 per cent annually. The aver- doxy as lived in Israel has become unsustainable. age ultra-Orthodox woman in Israel will have 6.7 children, three Ultra-Orthodoxy is a subculture whose members live by a strin- times as many as other Israeli Jewish women, according to a gov- gent version of Jewish religious law and belief and who seek to keep ernment study. surrounding society at arm’s length. The means of being a peo- As a result, the haredi community is strikingly young. An ultra- ple apart include dressing distinctively, living in self-segregated Orthodox neighbourhood can resemble a schoolyard, a land of neighbourhoods and maintaining separate schools, where sacred children with a few adults looking on. On a visit one afternoon texts are the main subject of study. Today’s Ultra-Orthodox Jews, to Beitar Illit, a haredi settlement in the West Bank, I stepped or haredim, marry early and have many children. In Israel, where into the lobby of a block of flats to check how many families lived the military draft is universal for other Jewish men and most Jew- there. I found 23 mailboxes. I also found two dozen preschool- ish women, the ultra-Orthodox have been largely exempt. aged girls playing—all dressed in long skirts and sleeves that This summer the issue of everyone bearing an “equal burden” came to their wrists—with one young mother watching them. for national defence has boiled over in Israeli politics. Yet the con- Among primary school pupils in Israel, over a fifth are ultra- scription argument may be a diversion from the real economic and Orthodox. The schoolchildren are the oldsters: one out of every political crisis. The haredi community is overwhelmingly poor, fiveharedim in Israel is an infant between the age of zero and four. underemployed, and dependent on the rest of Israel. It is also The rising number of haredim has a direct effect on conscrip- growing rapidly, creating an ever-larger weight for wider society tion into the Israeli military. Since its establishment in 1948, Israel to carry. Unless ultra-Orthodox education changes and haredim has had a universal draft for the Jewish majority.R eligious Jewish are integrated into the workplace, the Israeli economy could col- women may opt out and Jewish men engaged in full-time religious study can defer the draft, whichharedi men normally do until they Gershom Gorenberg lives in Jerusalem and is a historian and writer. His are too old to serve. A recent report by the research department of latest book is “The Unmaking of Israel” the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, shows that in 2005, 8.4 per cent of prospect september 2012 an orthodox challenge 37 © reuters ©

Jewish men subject to the draft were exempted for religious stud- not working for a living. Full-time religious study had become the ies. Last year, the number was 13 per cent—more than the number most common occupation of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel. of men exempted for all other reasons. Not surprisingly, 55 per cent of haredi families in Israel live As the proportion of Israeli men defending the country shrinks, below the poverty line, according to the most recent report by the discontent rises among those who serve and among their parents. government’s National Insurance Institute. The community is “If we hear on the radio that a soldier was killed, it doesn’t make deeply dependent on government funds and private philanthropy. sense to me that part [of the public] doesn’t worry whether that’s Men who study receive small stipends, paid for with a mix of state my son,” Dan Meridor, the Intelligence Minister, softly told an assistance and donations. Teaching in state-funded schools and audience of young haredi men at a recent interview evening in yeshivot (Talmudic academies) and working for the state rabbin- Jerusalem. The movement demanding that the government con- ate are important sources of employment. script haredim is not so soft-spoken; it calls itself T“ he Suckers.” An education gap makes finding other kinds of work hard, Yet the economic burden borne by the majority is more seri- especially for men. Boys and girls attend separate schools. Reli- ous. It’s not a given that the army must grow with the population. gion dominates the curriculum, especially in boys’ schools. At But Israel’s economy definitely needs to expand, and has a harder Nitei Meir, an elementary school in Beitar Illit, boys study reli- time doing so when a significant minority will not or cannot work. gious subjects from 8:30 to 2:30, then have two hours of general Again, numbers tell the story. In 1979, 21 per cent of ultra- studies. Rabbi Yosef Rozovsky, the educational director, told me Orthodox men aged between 35 and 54 were not employed. That that the curriculum includes arithmetic, Hebrew, and history. Civ- was twice the proportion among other Jews. But things got much ics is not on the list. Nor is English, a requirement for many jobs worse. By 2008, two-thirds of haredi men in that age bracket were and for higher education. “The moment a boy studies English, 38 an orthodox challenge prospect september 2012

he is exposed to the wider world and naturally he leaves religion,” tion, and really less. Girls’ schools usually have a wider curricu- explained Nitei Meir’s headmaster, Rabbi Eran Ben-Porat. The lum, since haredim see Talmud study as a male realm. Overall, school’s purpose is to shape a pious personality, not to prepare says Ben-David, the economist who is head of the Taub Center boys for worldly pursuits, or participation in democratic society. for Social Policy Studies in Israel, the level of general education in Many elementary schools provide even less general educa- haredi schools is “below Third World.” tion, though some parents are aware that such schooling leads to In Israel’s high-tech driven economy, jobs for the underedu- a vocational dead end. One evening, in an ultra-Orthodox neigh- cated are scarce. In his Jerusalem office, with graphs on his com- bourhood of Jerusalem, I listened to the pained musings of a puter screen, Ben-David described the trends to me in a mix of haredi man in his late thirties. He had expected to have a “Torah wonder and despair. The good news is that over the past 40 years, position” by his age, a job based on his religious studies. But Torah employment has risen among Israeli women. But the percentage positions have turned scarce; he’d found only part-time teaching of men with jobs shows a steady descent. Breaking down the fig- work. Speaking carefully, he criticised people within his commu- ures shows that employment has held steady among men with col- nity who trust God will provide, yet he sent his sons to a school lege-level education. Among those with less, it has fallen. The less that allocates just 45 minutes a day to general studies. That is the schooling, the bigger the drop. For men with eight years or less of new norm, he said. He had organised a private English class for his school, the employment rate is now less than 60 per cent. son and several other boys. It was an investment in his son’s future Even among Israelis with jobs, says Ben-David, productivity and a quiet act of rebellion. Before I left his home, he insisted I isn’t keeping up with the developed world. The drag comes from sign a statement that I would write nothing that the parts of the economy that employ the less educated. The com- could identify him, lest his criticisms hurt bined effect,B en-David says, is that “Israel’s growth path is falling his chances of arranging marriages for his behind western countries.” children. The haredi crisis is just one reason that Israel is losing the eco- Boys normally continue on from pri- nomic race. For decades, governments have invested too little in mary school to yeshivot that teach only education, part of a trend of trying to shrink government that has religious subjects—mainly Talmud, the reduced the country’s only real resource: educated minds. 1500-year-old compendium of rab- But the wider economic picture has serious implications for binic debates of law and belief. Their the haredim. Graduates of ultra-Orthodox schools have an ever- studies fit the community’s ideals. smaller chance of making a living. If they do get jobs, But for the surrounding society, they they’re likely to be in sectors that drag the econ- have achieved no more than omy back. Poverty will rise, but so will the costs an eighth-grade educa- to the country of helping the poor. The most

An ultra-Orthodox family enjoys a rare Jerusalem snowfall. General education in Orthodox schools is “below Third World” A A rmangue/ P/P © Bernat Bernat © prospect september 2012 an orthodox challenge 39 educated young Israelis, such as software developers, academics of children and married at the same age. and doctors, can take their skills abroad; many already do. “Coun- The haredi renaissance, as Friedman has shown, began with tries fail,” warns Ben-David. “Greece is on the brink. Argentina apparently inconsequential government moves. During Isra- has made a habit of it.” el’s 1948 war of independence, 400 Jerusalem yeshivah students were exempted from mobilisation. The Israeli army held the west- f the haredi “utopia” brings hunger for its members and ern part of Jerusalem, but the UN partition of Palestine hadn’t bankruptcy for those who unwillingly bankroll it, how did assigned the city to the Jewish state. Jerusalem was home to it come into existence? Most Israelis would answer that the haredi factions with particularly extreme anti-Zionist views. Mili- haredi community is what’s left of traditional eastern Euro- tary authorities chose to avoid a public confrontation with Jewish Ipean Jewish society from before modernity intruded. That’s a fal- opponents, fearing that the spectacle could weaken its interna- lacy. Ultra-Orthodoxy is a modern creation, and the Israeli haredi tional position. After the war, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) lifestyle, with its lifetime students, is an innovation formed in the continued to grant a few hundred deferments to haredi men who Jewish state, largely a result of the short-sighted decisions of sec- remained full-time students. Gradually, the quota crept upward. ular politicians. Another policy unintentionally made adult yeshivah study Ultra-Orthodoxy was born in social changes that shook Euro- financially feasible.B efore statehood, most Jews in Palestine sent pean Jewry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The shifts their children to school systems linked to Zionist political move- included access to secular education and the half-fulfilled prom- ments. In 1949 the Knesset approved free elementary school edu- ise of Jews being accepted into non-Jewish society. Beforehand, cation. The law funded existing schools and a new haredi school Jewish religious tradition was simply how Jews lived. Modernity system. The addition was barely mentioned in parliament. After turned religion into a question, something that could either be all, the haredim were fading away. dropped or reshaped for new circumstances. But state funds made it possible to open new ultra-Orthodox New ideologies, including Zionism, defined the Jews as an eth- schools. Women could finish teacher training by the time they nic group. Orthodoxy was the approach of people who chose to turned 20. The leading haredi rabbi in Israel, Avraham Yeshayahu hold on to traditional practice and belief, in a manner “more self- Karlitz, promoted a revolution in the name of conservatism. Ultra- conscious and less self-confident” than before, as the preeminent Orthodox men and women would marry young. Women would get Jewish historian Jacob Katz wrote. To refrain from working on the teaching jobs and support husbands who continued studying Tal- Sabbath, to pray thrice daily in Hebrew, and to keep the dietary mud in a kollel, an academy for married men. Working parents laws was now an ideology. helped out. Jews in western countries, moved by nostalgia for the Or rather, several ideologies: one version, known as modern murdered Jewish communities of Europe, donated funds that pro- Orthodoxy, promoted keeping religious law while integrating into vided small salaries for students. The draft deferment sealed the non-Jewish society. A variation, religious Zionism, deal: study was the way to avoid spending the formative years of affirmed both Orthodox practice and nationalism. early adulthood as a minority among secular soldiers. Ultra-Orthodoxy took a different direction, best So more than ever before, Israel’s haredim realised the ideal of defined in the postulate ofM oshe Sofer, the nine- living apart from modernity. They created a monastic community teenth-century rabbi: “Anything new is forbidden without celibacy, a pietist society without laypeople. Between 1952 by the Torah.” Ironically, this refusal to absorb and 1981, the average marriage age for Israeli haredi men dropped new ideas was itself an innovation in Judaism. from 27.5 to 21.5. On average, women married by their 20th birth- The ultra-Orthodox rejected secular educa- day and quickly began having children. Men continued to study tion and secular ideologies, including Zion- for a decade or more after marrying. When they left kollel, they ism, and stressed the authority of rabbis in looked for Torah positions such as teaching or working in the state everyday life. The strategy did not prevent rabbinate. The exodus of the young generation ceased; the cul- young people from abandoning religion. tural gap between the haredi community and Israeli society was Ultra-Orthodox rabbis discouraged too wide to leap. Instead, young people looked down on their par- their remaining followers from leaving ents as insufficiently pious and aimed at being more punctilious eastern Europe for Palestine or the dan- in observing Jewish law. gerously open societies of the west—with Economically, the new “utopia” was not built to last. The sec- catastrophic results in the Holocaust. ond generation of Israeli yeshivah students had many siblings, and When Israel became independent, its did not have working parents to help them. The supply of Torah haredi minority was a shattered remnant. jobs for men did not expand with the community. Secular Zionists convincingly claimed On the brink of breakdown, Israel’s 1977 elections provided that their strategy for Jewish survival had salvation. For the first time, a leader of the political right, Men- won. According to Menachem Friedman, achem Begin, of the Likud party, won a plurality. To build a coali- the Israeli sociologist, many haredim tion in the 120-member parliament he needed the ultra-Orthodox expected their community to wither away party, Agudat Yisrael. Begin’s coalition agreements in 1977 and “within the foreseeable future.” 1981 were lists of concessions to the haredim, and were only the Friedman’s description of Israel at start. Yeshivot and ultra-Orthodox schools received more govern- its founding includes another dimen- ment money. The army stopped setting a quota on yeshivah draft sion, stunning in its contrast to today: in deferments. The number climbed from 8000 in 1977 to 40,000 in 1948, the ultra-Orthodox had the same 2005, and has kept rising. employment rate as other Israeli Jews. More help came from the social welfare system. Rather than On average, they had the same number give parents tax deductions, Israel pays a stipend for each child, 40 an orthodox challenge prospect september 2012 © reuters © “Military service forges a common Israeli identity.” The demand that ultra-Orthodox serve is “a demand that they join the mainsteam”

so families too poor to pay taxes also benefit. In the mid-1980s, the Netanyahu’s coalition, apparently providing the parliamentary government adjusted the stipends so that the amounts climbed base for reform: the government’s majority no longer depended sharply from the third child on—a windfall for haredim. on 15 ultra-Orthodox MPs who oppose ending the deferment. A Begin’s coalitions set a pattern. The ultra-Orthodox vote even- Kadima backbencher, Yohanan Plesner, produced a proposal that tually fragmented between more than one party. But their com- included new tracks for haredi service, a strict ceiling on defer- bined strength grew, and they consistently preferred Likud-led ments past age 22, and financial penalties for those who evade governments. On an emotional and ideological level, the ultra- service. Netanyahu rejected the plan, offering only softer reform. Orthodox saw the right as having a warmer attitude toward reli- After only 70 days in the government, Kadima bolted. gious tradition than the left did.O n a practical level, the Likud was At first glance, all this seems like negotiations between theR ed willing to meet haredi demands. Besides the domestic impact, the Queen and the White Queen in Looking-Glass Land. Why not just alliance tilted Israeli politics toward permanent rule of the West allow the deferment to lapse, draftharedi 18-year-olds, and arrest Bank and away from peace negotiations. anyone refusing to show up? Yet the separate society has grown In the 1990s, the state began building exclusively ultra-Ortho- too strong for that. As the summer’s coalition crisis shows, Netan- dox settlements as part of the wider effort to encourage Israelis to yahu still treats the ultra-Orthodox parties as partners whom he settle in the West Bank. The move not only provided subsidised can’t afford to divorce. Even avid proponents of equal conscrip- housing to desperate families but also locked ultra-Orthodox par- tion fear that applying the same rules to haredim as to other Israe- ties into support of settlements in occupied territory. The separa- lis could provoke mass refusal and grant martyr status to jailed tist community survived another generation. haredi men. Plesner’s recommendations are a compromise meant Now, though, the cost has become unbearable. Rather than to make serving more palatable. living apart, the ultra-Orthodox need to join Israeli society. But “There’s an inherent contradiction,” as one of the young haredi there’s no easy way to do that. Take conscription, the issue that men told me in the café, using an ancient Aramaic logic term from shook Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition this summer. For years, the the Talmud. “Drafting everyone isn’t realistic. But any compro- government has tried to attract haredim to serve in the army and mise means that the [military] burden isn’t shared equally.” He continue into the job market. In 1999, the IDF created an infan- was right. If adopted, Plesner’s proposals would provoke legal try battalion for haredim, overseen by ultra-Orthodox rabbis. No and political challenges to new forms of preferential treatment. women serve on their base. A newer programme for haredi men What’s more, creating separate units that follow haredi religious allows them to enlist at 22—usually after they’ve started families— rules undermines fundamental principles of the Israeli military. to be trained as technicians. Even with preferential conditions, the One of those, set down by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding two tracks draw less than a sixth of potential haredi draftees. prime minister, is that military units can’t be linked to ideological In February, Israel’s supreme court brought the issue to a head. camps, for fear that soldiers might not obey orders of the elected It ruled that the law allowing yeshivah deferments discriminates government. Letting clerics oversee haredi units adds to that risk. against other conscripts, and gave parliament a deadline to pass Ultra-Orthodox insistence on strict separation of the sexes also a more equitable law. In May, the centrist Kadima party joined runs counter to the IDF’s effort to promote equal opportunities SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

Frank Sidgwick JBS Haldane CEM Joad Naomi Mitchison Nevil Shute John Betjeman JPW Mallalieu Philip Toynbee William Buchan Brian Inglis John Mortimer EP Thompson Christopher Tolkien Timothy Raison Antonia Fraser Peter Hopkirk Timothy Sprigge Thomas Pakenham Jon Stallworthy Richard Sorabji Peter Jay Christopher Booker Stephen Jessel Humphrey Carpenter David Jessel Stephen Oppenheimer Chris Lowe Pico Iyer Nicholas Shakespeare David Shukman James Runcie Paul Watkins Rageh Omaar Alain de Botton William Fiennes Poppy Adams Rory Stewart Hugh Miles Writers and thinkers attend the Dragon School, Oxford.

Coeducational, boarding and day preparatory school, 4 to 13 years www.dragonschool.org 42 an orthodox challenge prospect september 2012 for women. If a woman cannot command a technical unit because grammes aimed at the ultra-Orthodox is a breakthrough—a small its soldiers are ultra-Orthodox, that’s one less position available one. A high-end estimate is that 6000 haredi men and women— to female officers. Before Plesner published his proposals, a mostly women—are now enrolled. Drop-out rates for the men are dozen female ex-brigadiers and colonels signed a letter to him high, according to a recent report by the ministry of industry and and Netanyahu demanding that equal service for haredim not be trade. Beginning college in one’s twenties, without having studied achieved by “sacrificing the rights of women soldiers.” maths or English in one’s teens, is a high bar to leap. The gender problem points to a deeper dilemma. For main- Cohen notes one more flaw in the idea that cutting government stream Israel, the IDF is the “people’s army”—in the sense that support will increase haredi job rates. The most significant form, everyone should share the burdens and dangers, but also that mil- he says, is funding for schools and yeshivot, which pays teachers’ itary service forges a common Israeli identity. The demand that salaries. Reduce that, and even more will be unemployed. haredim serve is also a demand that they join the mainstream. On the macro level, the economic relation between the Israeli But the army—a day-and-night, regimented institution—is a poor mainstream and ultra-Orthodox society is an impending disaster. vehicle for peaceful integration. Either the army has to impose The majority is justifiably outraged at paying for the minority’s the ethos of the majority or allow the minority to impose its rules. choice of lifestyle. But on the individual level, an ultra-Orthodox Despite the emotions aroused by draft evasion, it makes much couple in their thirties with six children have very limited choices. more sense to begin integration gradually in the work world. Neoliberalism is even less effective at dealing with their dilemma That reform, one might think, would have Netanyahu’s full than it is at coping with other forms of poverty. support. A hard-line neoliberal, Netanyahu served as finance A way out of this crisis will require a significant cultural conces- minister under Ariel Sharon between 2003 and 2005. He reduced sions by both the minority and the majority—and it will demand taxes on the wealthy and slashed aid to the poor, including child government spending rather than cuts. stipends for large families. Critics of the government’s support of The concession by the majority is to reconsider the emotional the ultra-Orthodox argue that those measures had a delayed effect commitment to the “people’s army.” Israel’s population has grown of pushing haredim to get jobs, as shown by an uptick in employ- even as the army has become more technologically advanced. The ment since 2007. issue of whether the universal draft is still necessary has been at In fact, Netanyahu’s method was akin to using a screwdriver the edge of national consciousness for nearly two decades, and pol- to remove a splinter. More haredim did begin to articulate a sense iticians have evaded it. By beginning a shift to a volunteer army, of crisis. Vocational training and special college programmes for with financial benefits for those who serve, the government could haredim, with gender-separated classes and remedial courses to remove one of the many obstacles to haredi men going to work. make up for years of missing education, gradually grew. “In the To remove the others, it will have to invest more in job training, long run, when we look back, we’ll see that 2003 was the turning including remedial education and help in learning the culture of point,” says Rabbi Beazley Cohen, a former kollel student in his the world of work. The state will also need to pay stipends for those thirties who has become an advocate of haredim going to work. in the training process so they can support their families. Indeed, That doesn’t mean Cohen is endorsing Netanyahu’s policies; the stipends should be greater than the benefits those men now he’s simply describing their impact. It’s essential to look at the receive as kollel students, as an incentive for making the transi- economic figures closely. The loss of benefits hit large numbers tion. In the short term this, too, is preferential treatment, but it is of people; only a fraction responded by going to work. The rise in an investment in creating a culture of work. jobs is greater among ultra-Orthodox women than men. Among Moving older kollel students into jobs may be impossible. The men, the increase in employment is mainly among those under 35. government has helped make them unemployable and has a Though more haredim are working, the number below the poverty responsibility to keep supporting them and their dependents. line hasn’t dropped, according to the National Insurance Insti- But it needs to make clear that the benefits are being phased out; tute. That suggests that the newly employed are mostly in low-pay- men now in their twenties can’t expect lifetime study with state ing or part-time jobs. help. Likewise, it needs to phase out paying yeshivah teachers, but For haredi men, the obstacles to going to work can be immense, slowly: those with jobs will continue to draw state-funded sala- Cohen says. The secular world is a foreign country, and the work ries, but the haredi community must pay for new teachers. In the environment is terra incognita. Kollel students are not used to hav- long term, religious education should not be the state’s business. ing to keep a strict schedule or follow a boss’s instructions. In their On the other hand, general education certainly is. Parents have own community, Talmud scholars are highly respected for “their the right to raise their children according to their faith, but that knowledge and analytic ability,” Cohen notes. “The need to start right must be balanced against children’s rights to be able to sup- all over with a simple job and low pay is very hard for the outstand- port themselves and understand the world around them. Ultra- ing yeshivah student, and prevents many from taking steps toward Orthodox schools must teach mathematics, English, science, gainful employment.” history, civics and other basics of a modern education. Implement- Those hit hardest by the economic crisis are parents over 40 ing that change will provoke fury among ultra-Orthodox leaders, with many children. But leaving the kollel for job training can even if some parents may be quietly satisfied. cost a man his small scholarship; an entry-level unskilled job The problem is that Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians do might not be much better. And the older someone is, the harder not appear to have the courage to make that essential reform. Yet it is to train for a job and find one. I askedC ohen if there is a lost delaying it only makes it more difficult. AsB en-David, the econo- generation of haredi men who have no chance of employment. “I mist, points out, today’s haredi children will be tomorrow’s voters. don’t want to reach that conclusion,” he said, “but sometimes I At a certain point, there may not be a majority to vote for reform. feel it’s true.” The alternative to collapse is for Israel’s leaders to state clearly For the younger generation, the colleges for haredim offer what the smartest and most honest young ultra-Orthodox already a bridge to a profession. 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PROSPECT Full page 2012.indd 1 16/08/2012 11:46 44 prospect september 2012 Copycat China From replica White Houses to Chairman Mao impersonators, the “copycat” phenomenon is sweeping China. Is it an excuse for pirating or an inspiring challenge to authority? yu hua

In China in Ten Words, the prize-winning novelist Yu Hua sets dream, but I am pretty sure he could never have imagined such out “to compress the endless chatter of China today into ten an outlandish misuse of his image, and Americans at large would simple words.” His book has been called a “much needed, and no doubt be ﬂabbergasted to see their president serving as brand hugely subversive, dose of reality,” and invaluable for under- ambassador for a Chinese knockoff. WeC hinese take it all in our standing modern China (see p52). The extract below deals with stride, for we don’t see anything wrong with copycatting Obama. the copycat phenomenon, a sign of the moral confusion that After all, inC hina today, with the exception of the party in power threatens China’s future. and our current government leaders—plus retired but still living party and state leaders—everybody else can be copycatted and he story of contemporary China can be told from ridiculed, imitated and spoofed, at will. many different angles, but here I want to tell it in In 2008, Hunan province—the home province of Mao Zedong, terms of the copycat, a national myth playing itself our erstwhile Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Commander, out on a popular level. and Great Helmsman—embarked on a campaign to select Mao The word here rendered as “copycat” (shanzhai) lookalikes from all over the country. “This is an innovation in our Toriginally denoted a mountain hamlet protected by a stockade cultural system reform,” a local official explained. “It will effec- or other fortifications; later it acquired an extended meaning as a tively promote the development of our cultural tourism industry.” hinterland area, home to the poor. It was also a name once given One hundred and thirty Mao Zedong lookalikes travelled to the lairs of outlaws and bandits, and the word has continued to from all corners of the country, braving every hardship to arrive have connotations of freedom from official control. at their destination. After several elimination rounds 13 finalists In the past few years, with the increasing popularity of copy- entered the last stage of the competition. At the news conference cat cell phones that offer multiple functions at a low price, the they sat in a row on the stage, each with a fake mole stuck on his word “copycat” has given the word “imitation” a new meaning, chin. Some struck the classic pose of the historical Mao Zedong, and at the same time the limits to the original sense of “imita- a cigarette between their curled fingers and an ankle resting on tion” have been eroded, allowing room for it to acquire additional their knee. The real Mao Zedong spoke with a genuine Xiangtan shades of meaning: counterfeiting, infringement, deviations from accent; copycat Xiangtan accents spilled from the mouths of the the standard, mischief, and caricature. It would not be going too copycat Maos. far to say that “copycat” has more of an anarchist spirit than any One was so confident in his appearance that he refused to put other word in the contemporary Chinese language. on makeup; another put on makeup but claimed to be “the most Copycat cell phones began by imitating the functions and physically unaltered.” A third mock Mao, facing the packed audi- designs of such brands as Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Erics- ence below, improvised as giddily as a pop singer. “I’m 115 this son; to muddy the waters further, they gave themselves names year,” he declared, clutching the microphone tightly, “but it gives like Nokir, Samsing, and Suny Ericcsun. By plagiarising exist- me such a lift to be here, I feel just as young as you see me!” ing brands and thereby skimping on research and development Yet another Mao Zedong lookalike imitated Mao’s speech costs, they sold for a fraction of the price of established products. at the founding ceremony: “Greetings, comrades!” His phony Given their technical capabilities and trendy appearance, they Xiangtan accent enlivened the atmosphere, and the audience soon cornered the low end of the consumer market. cried happily in return, “Greetings, Chairman Mao!” With the rapid growth of the copycat industry there is now “Long live the people!” he continued. a dizzying variety of knockoff phone brands. One, claiming to “Long live Chairman Mao!” the crowd roared. be manufactured by “Harvard Communications,” has recently These past few years Mao Zedong has been copycatted con- appeared in the stores. The brand presents President Obama stantly. In the most bizarre instance, a female Mao impersonator as its spokesman and sports a beaming Obama on its advertise- appeared in southwest China, making such an immediate impact ments. His smile, seen everywhere these days, has to count as the that she was hailed by the Chinese media as “sweeping aloft in most famous—and the most powerful—smile in the world, but majesty,” a literary expression over which Mao once claimed now it’s been hijacked and made to appear in promotions for Chi- exclusive rights. When this 51-year-old woman made herself up nese copycat cell phones. “This is my Blackberry,” Obama tells us as Mao Zedong and walked along the street, waving to the crowds with a grin, “the Blockberry Whirlwind 9500!” that gathered, she looked uncannily like the Mao who waved to Obama is today’s symbol of that long-running American the parading masses from Tiananmen, and the crowds pressed toward her, rushing to be the first to shake her hand. In a moment Yu Hua is one of China’s most celebrated novelists. “China in Ten Words” the street was a dense throng of humanity, and it took her more is published by Duckworth than half an hour to walk just a few hundred yards. prospect september 2012 copycat china 45

Once copycat cell phones had taken China by storm, copycat seven o’clock each evening, notorious for its rigidity and dogma- digital cameras, copycat MP3 players, copycat game consoles, tism, has become a perennial target of mockery. In one spoof, and other such pirated and knockoff products came pouring two completely unfamiliar anchors appeared on our monitors in forth. Copycat brands have rapidly expanded to include instant a skit inspired by the 2008 milk-powder scare. In the ponderous noodles, sodas, milk, medications, laundry detergent, and sports tones of Network News they announced that the regular anchors shoes, and so the word “copycat” has penetrated deep into every had been poisoned by contaminated milk and rushed off to inten- aspect of Chinese people’s lives. Copycat stars, TV programmes, sive care; they had been brought in at the last minute to deliver advertisements, pop songs, Spring Festival galas, and Bird’s that evening’s broadcast. Nest national stadiums have all made a splash on the inter- Some versions of Copycat News have been quite incisive in net, each revealing their own special ﬂavour and gaining confronting sensitive social issues. When official media out- instant popularity. lets hem and haw, Copycat News gets straight to the point, Copycat stars appear in imitation shows, just like the telling things as they are and adding liberal doses of deri- ersatz Mao Zedongs. The difference is that sham Maos sion and sarcasm. In August 2008, after the success of the require a physical likeness, whereas the copycat stars aspire opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, the official Chi- merely to a similarity in spirit. However different their nese media sang its praises to the skies, proudly declaring looks, so long as they can capture a star’s voice and expres- that such a glorious opening ceremony had no parallel in sion, they can achieve their goal and create some buzz. As the past and would never be matched in the future. Copy- their reputation soars, some copycat stars chafe at their cat News said the same thing, but cynically. Its commen- limited resemblance to their models and end up wanting tary went like this: “Such a glorious opening ceremony has to look like them, too; so they go to enormous expense and never happened before and will never happen again. Why suffer the discomfort of surgery to have themselves cos- so? Because other nations with so many people do not have metically reshaped, looking forward to the day when they so much money, and other nations with so much money do and the stars they are imitating will look like twins. Fired not have so many people, and other nations with so much with feverish ambition, they long to elevate themselves money and so many people do not have so much power.” from copycat status to genuine article and to downgrade From this we can see that the copycat phenomenon the original to a wannabe. has a certain positive significance in China today. Seen Copycat pop songs and copycat TV programs are in this way, it represents a challenge of the grassroots even more varied, combining imitation with parody. to the elite, of the popular to the official, of the weak Lyrics are altered at will so that the solemn becomes to the strong. comical and the refined becomes crude, and the More than 20 years have passed since the songs are deliberately performed out of tune. Cop- Tiananmen protests of 1989, and from today’s per- ycat TV programs, released as videos on the inter- spective their greatest impact has been the lack net, tend to be send-ups of official TV programs, and China Central Television’s Network News at

A replica Eiffel Tower in Zhouzhou, Heibei province © reuters © 46 copycat china prospect september 2012 © getty images getty ©

“Hands up if you’re Chairman Mao”: a lookalike competition in bearer chosen felt proud. A small mountain village in Henan’s 2008 in Hunan, Mao’s home province Hui County clearly did not qualify for such glory, but the locals went ahead and organised for themselves a homegrown version of of progress in reforming the political system. It’s fair to say that the relay, passing from one person to the next a simple handmade political reform was taking place in the 1980s, even if its pace was torch. Every villager was qualified to participate; no government slower than that of economic reform. AfterT iananmen, however, approval was required. They all looked pleased as punch, for their political reform ground to a halt, while the economy began break- love of China was not in the least inferior to that of the official neck development. Because of this paradox we find ourselves in torchbearers, and when footage of their exploit began to circulate a reality full of contradictions: conservative here, radical there; on the internet, it got a rapturous reception. the concentration of political power on this side, the unfettering of economic interests on that; dogmatism on the one hand, anar- opycat phenomena are everywhere in China today, and chism on the other; toeing the line here, tossing away the rule book even the political arena, so long untouchable, has suf- there. Over the past 20 years our development has been uneven fered an invasion. When the National People’s Congress rather than comprehensive, and this lopsided development is com- and the National Political Consultative Conference were promising the health of our society. Cin session, a man from Yibin in Sichuan, who described himself It seems to me that the emergence—and the unstoppable as a “Copycat Delegate to the National People’s Congress,” intro- momentum—of the copycat phenomenon is an inevitable conse- duced several motions on the internet regarding such issues as quence of this lopsided development. The ubiquity and sharpness insurance, old-age pensions for peasants, and personal income of social contradictions have provoked a confusion in people’s tax, hoping for a wide airing of his ideas. His election was laced value systems and worldview, thus giving birth to the copycat with black humour, for he explained that he had been the unani- effect, when all kinds of social emotions accumulate over time mous choice at a family gathering—a sardonic commentary on the and find only limited channels of release, transmuted constantly government’s practice of carefully vetting potential candidates for into seemingly farcical acts of rebellion that have certain anti- election to the NPC and NPCC. Although his election was the out- authoritarian, anti-mainstream, and anti-monopoly elements. come only of a family get-together, this copycat delegate actually The force and scale of copycatting demonstrate that the whole reﬂected more of a democratic spirit than those official delegates, nation has taken to it as a form of performance art. for he won votes from relatives sincere in their support, not votes When, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, the Olympic torch rigged by the authorities. arrived in Chinese territory, the cities among which it was relayed As a product of China’s uneven development, the copycat phe- were dictated by official fiat, and every torchbearer was chosen nomenon has as many negative implications as it has positive meticulously by government officials. The cost may have been aspects. The moral bankruptcy and confusion of right and wrong exorbitant, but the cities selected felt honoured, and every torch- in China today, for example, find vivid expression in copycatting. prospect september 2012 copycat china 47

done something illegal or unconscionable, but as long as you jus- tify yourself with some kind of copycat explanation, your action becomes legitimate and above board in the courtroom of public opinion. There’s nothing I can do about it, except pray that in the future, when people make up conversations with me, they don’t make me talk too much nonsense. If somebody has me say something clever, I’m even prepared to say thank you. If we conceptualise the copycat phenomenon as a form of revolutionary action initiated by the weak against the strong, then this kind of revolution has happened before in China—in the Cultural Revolution 44 years ago. When in 1966 Mao Zedong proclaimed, “To rebel is justified,” it triggered a release of revolutionary instincts among the weaker segments of society, and they rebelled with a passion. Everywhere they rose up against those in positions of authority. Traditional Communist Party committees and state organisations totally col- lapsed, and copycat leadership bodies sprouted up all over the place. All you needed to do was to get some people to back you, and overnight you could establish a rebel headquarters and pro- claim yourself its commander-in-chief. Soon there were too many copycat organisations and too little power to go around, triggering violent struggles between the various rebel headquarters. In Shanghai the struggle involved guns and live ammunition; but the rebels there were outdone by the ones in Wuhan, who used artillery pieces to assail each other’s positions. In efforts to expand their power bases, copycat leaders fought incessantly in conﬂicts that differed little from the tangled warfare between bandits that was once so common in China. Eventually the victors would incorporate the remnants of the vanquished and emerge with enhanced authority. Once the As the copycat concept has gained acceptance, plagiarism, piracy, traditional bases of party and state control had been eliminated, burlesque, parody, slander, and other actions originally seen as revolutionary committees—representing the new power struc- vulgar or illegal have been given a reason to exist; and in social psy- ture—were soon established, and those copycat commanders chology and public opinion they have gradually acquired respect- who had triumphed in the chaotic factional struggle transformed ability. No wonder that “copycat” has become one of the words themselves into the revolutionary committees’ official heads. most commonly used in China today. All of this serves to demon- Why, when discussing China today, do I always return to the strate the truth of the old Chinese saying: “The soil decides the Cultural Revolution? That’s because these two eras are so inter- crop, and the vine shapes the gourd.” related: even though the state of society now is very different Four years ago I saw a pirated edition of [my novel] Broth- from then, some psychological elements remain strikingly sim- ers for sale on the pedestrian bridge that crosses the street out- ilar. After participating in one mass movement during the Cul- side my apartment; it was lying there in a stack of other pirated tural Revolution, for example, we are now engaged in another: books. When the vendor noticed me running my eyes over his economic development. stock, he handed me a copy of my novel, recommending it as What I want to emphasise here is the parallel between the sud- a good read. A quick ﬂip through and I could tell at once that den appearance of myriad rebel headquarters at the beginning it was pirated. “No, it’s not a pirated edition,” he corrected me of the Cultural Revolution and the rapid emergence of the pri- earnestly. “It’s a copycat.” vate economy: in the 1980s, Chinese people replaced their passion That’s not the only time something like this has happened. for revolution with a passion for making money, and all at once In China today, in some spheres there is still a lack of freedom, there was an abundance of private businesses. Just as the copy- while in others there is so much freedom it’s hard to believe. More cat challenges the standard, so too the private sector assailed the than 20 years ago I could say whatever came into my head when I monopoly status of the state-owned economy. Innumerable busi- was interviewed by a journalist, but the interview would undergo nesses soon went belly-up, only for countless others to take their strict review and be drastically edited before publication; ten places, just like the constant setbacks and dynamic comebacks years ago I began to be more circumspect in interviews, because I associated with revolution, or like Bai Juyi’s lines about the grass- discovered that newspapers would report everything I said, even land: “Though burned by wildfire, it’s never destroyed/ When the my swear words; and now I am often amazed to read interviews spring winds blow it grows again.” I have never given—remarks that the reporter has simply con- China’s economic miracle was launched in just this way. cocted, a gushing stream of drivel attributed to me. Once I ran Through its continual cycles of ruin and rebirth the private sec- into a reporter who had fabricated just such an interview and I tor demonstrated its enormous capacity for survival, at the same told him firmly, “I have never been interviewed by you, ever.” time forcing ossified, conservative state enterprises to adapt to He responded just as firmly: “That was a copycat interview.” the cutthroat competition of the marketplace. I was speechless. But that is our reality today: you may have In their colourful history during these past 30 years, the 48 copycat china prospect september 2012

China, bamboozled tionary justice” while peasants sang fan- the prospect of living in “Ladies’ Soother Nick Carn tasy songs about sweet potatoes as big as Estates” (Ladies’ Soother is a brand of young children. Today, successful busi- vaginal cream) proved a bridge too far Hundreds of mil- nessmen construct replica White Houses, for inhabitants. As entertaining as bam- lions lifted from pov- complete with Lincoln bedrooms to which boozling can be, Yu sees it as a sign of “a erty and vast empty they take their secretaries. The story of breakdown of social morality and a confu- ghost cities—so much how the most communist country in the sion in the values system in China today; about China’s social world became the most capitalist is one of it is an aftereffect of our uneven develop- and economic mira- change—and of unsettling continuity. ment these past thirty years.” cle is extraordinary When Yu explores the words “Copy- Yu’s frequently hilarious dissection and strangely hard cat,” and especially “Bamboozle,” the con- of modern China is a much needed—and to believe. Explana- nections between the Cultural Revolution hugely subversive—dose of reality. The tions of this miracle, and its successor mass movement, “eco- government reacts badly to criticism, and given by economists and political analysts, nomic development,” become clear. most China experts rely on relations with do not much help—they skirt a reality that “Bamboozle” is what the system tries the authorities and avoid upsetting their lies beyond their terms of reference. Some- to do to you—and also what you do in paymasters. Many China consultancies thing so vast and so strange as China needs order to defeat it. This word “throws a provide access to government officials; an artist’s interpretation. cloak of respectability over deception falling foul of them would damage busi- Superficially, Yu Hua sees modern and manufactured rumour.” For exam- ness. Others, for example the economists China as quite different from the China of ple one city, in the course of its “market- covering China for investment banks, have his youth. When he was at school in the six- able operations,” sold its pavements and little interest in annoying government offi- ties and early seventies, party doctrine dis- everyone had to walk in the road. The cials and jeopardising deals. couraged girls and boys from speaking to inhabitants were bamboozled. In another China is trying simultaneously to nav- one another. That has changed—his son province, teachers were obliged to take igate both a political transition and a tells him that for his sex education lessons an exam to test their professional com- change in its economic model and the the girls were instructed to sit on the boys’ petence—apart from single parents, who strain is beginning to show. If you feel that knees. were exempted. So the teachers all got what you are being told about China is But he also suggests similarities. Dur- divorced and the government was bam- not quite right, then reading China in Ten ing the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards boozled. When another city auctioned Words is a very good place to start. toured the country dispensing “revolu- the right to name roads and buildings, Nick Carn is founder of Carn Macro Advisors grassroots have performed feats unimaginable to us in the ing into spacious villas, travelling in luxury sedans, drinking past, doing things their own way, through different channels. expensive wines, wearing designer brands, and saying a few words Their roads to success were highly unconventional, and so too of English in an atrocious accent. As copycat aristocrats prolifer- were their roads to failure; the social fabric they have created is ate, so too do the social institutions catering to their needs. equally peculiar. Just as the reveille wakens soldiers from sleep, The social fabric of China today is shaped by a bizarre mix- so too, as “copycat” took on a rich new range of meanings, it ture of elements, for the beautiful and the ugly, the progressive has suddenly brought into view all manner of things that have and the backward, the serious and the ridiculous, are constantly been churning below the surface during these years of hectic rubbing shoulders with each other. The copycat phenomenon is development. The awesome spectacle that has ensued is rather like this too, revealing society’s progress but also its regression. akin to what would happen if, in a crowded square, someone When health is impaired, inﬂammation ensues, and the cop- yells “Copycat!” in an effort to catch a friend’s attention and ycat trend is a sign of something awry in China’s social tissue. everybody in the square comes dashing over, because that is the Inﬂammation fights infection, but it may also lead to swelling, name they have all adopted. pustules, ulcers, and rot. As miracles multiply, desire swells. Tiananmen Gate, the symbol of Chinese power, and the White House, the symbol of Amer- ican power, have naturally become the structures most vigorously emulated by copycat architects all across China. There is a difference, however. Mock Tiananmens tend to be erected by local officials in the countryside: newly prosperous villages convert their local government offices to miniature Tiananmens so that when the lowest-level officials in the Chinese bureaucracy are ensconced inside, they can savour the beautiful illusion of being masters of the nation. Imitation White Houses, on the other hand, supply office space for the rich and also meet their living needs. By day a company executive sits at his desk in a copycat version of the Oval Office, directing the activities of his employees by telephone; by night he takes his pretty secretary by the hand and leads her into the copycat Lincoln Bedroom. In the course of China’s 30-year economic miracle many poor people from the grassroots have acquired wealth and power and have begun to hanker after a western-style aristocratic life; mov- Support The National Forest Meet corporate, environmental and social responsibility objectives by supporting The National Forest. Efficient, Effective, Ethical Contact: Lynne Richards T: 01283 551211 E: [email protected] W: www.nationalforest.org 50 prospect september 2012 Legacy of empire Forget ideology—listen to the voices of those who were ruled kwasi kwarteng

he relationship between Islam and the west, the rise material interests and political machinations—by which imperial of tiger economies in Asia, and the modern-day role rule and influence emerged in a given region at a given time. of the United States as world leader can all be illumi- Darwin’s broad-brush approach fails to enter into the mindset nated by reference to the history of empire. Yet mod- of imperialists. To mention Garnet Wolseley as the “model of Vic- ern accounts of empire—or the British empire, at torian professionalism” is informative, but no other context is pro- Tleast—often focus too narrowly on whether it was a force for good vided for this important military figure’s character.C oming from or evil. Two major books last year proved the stubborn endur- a relatively impecunious family, Wolseley was beset by monetary ance of this ideological pursuit. Whereas Richard Gott’s Resist- worries. He shared an evangelical belief in God’s will, which per- ance, Repression and Revolt described the British empire as an haps stemmed from his Irish Protestantism. This faith also led exercise in brutal repression and violence, Niall Ferguson’s Civi- Wolseley to identify wholly with England: “To see England great lization: The West and the Rest presented western imperialism as is my highest aspiration, and that I might have a leading part in a somewhat benign force, promoting democracy, medicine and contributing to the attainment of that greatness, is my only real liberal economics. ambition,” he wrote to his wife in 1882. The granular portraits What unites these approaches is that they are derived from of imperialists offered by Darwin fail to capture such significant political theories with origins in the west: the ideologies of details. It is vital in imperial history to attempt to understand the Marxism, Whiggism, and neoconservatism. But two new books cultural values of those who, like Wolseley, drove expansion and attempt to free themselves from these constraints. In Unfinished maintained rule on the ground. As David Cannadine, the British Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain, John Darwin, an Oxford historian now based at Princeton University, has said, the task is academic and the author of After Tamerlane, which won the Wolf- to recover the “world view and social presumptions of those who son Prize in 2007, attempts to place Britain’s global commercial dominated and ruled the empire.” and colonising enterprise in a wider context, beyond the skewer- The intellectual culture and character of people like George ing effect of modern ideologies.P ankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Goldie, often described as the founder of modern Nigeria; Cecil Empire gives voice to the intellectual, articulate response of the Rhodes, the “diamond king” of the Cape Colony; and John people who were themselves subjected to imperial rule. Nicholson, who recaptured Delhi after the so-called Indian Darwin’s Unfinished Empire focuses almost exclusively on Brit- mutiny of 1857 and who was a popular Victorian hero, were very ain’s actions and interests. Darwin’s scope could not be wider, different from the characters we find in modern Whitehall or in encompassing the political integration of the British Isles; the col- British academia. Acknowledging that General Charles Gordon onisation of America and the south Pacific; and the various forms genuinely believed the Garden of Eden was situated in the Sey- of imperial rule in India and Africa, right through the 19th cen- chelles is likely to lead to more insight than the smooth general- tury to the end of empire in the 1940s and 50s. Darwin takes the ities modern historians construct about the reasons for British “long view” of the history of the British empire—with chapters imperial expansion. such as “Imagining Empire,” “Defending Empire,” and “Ending It is also important to understand the attitude of the Brit- Empire”—in an attempt to explain the factors behind Britain’s glo- ish public during the time of imperialism. Despite outbursts of bal expansion, as well as the origins of the “geopolitical order” of popular sentiment on occasions like the 1897 Diamond Jubilee, the “new world” that exists today. it is easy to exaggerate the hold of empire on the public imagi- But such generality brings with it problems. One of the diffi- nation. The late-Victorian accountant commuting on the newly culties of writing about the British empire is the immense range opened Metropolitan line from Pinner to Moorgate (the Pinner of experiences involved. Imperial histories oscillate between sur- branch was opened in 1885) would have had very little conscious- veys, like Darwin’s book, and a more detailed focus on particular ness of the everyday business of maintaining a global empire. As times and places, such as James Barr’s 2011 book Line in the Sand, George Orwell wrote in his essay on Rudyard Kipling (the poet of which looks at the partition in the Middle East between France the imperial Raj, who was born in Bombay and was described by and Britain that emerged after the first world war. In attempting Orwell as “the prophet of imperialism”): “The mass of the people to capture the story of the empire, Darwin incorporates military in the 1890s were anti-militaristic, bored by the empire, and only campaigns, trade, religion and decolonisation. Yet an account unconsciously patriotic.” Orwell, the sensitive journalist, describes such as Barr’s sheds far more light on the chaotic processes—the the Britain of his childhood more acutely than many modern historians, including John Darwin. Kwasi Kwarteng is the Member of Parliament for Spelthorne The unfamiliar institutions of imperial Britain must be seen prospect september 2012 legacy of empire 51 in the context of a time Yet from the empire’s in which government inception, there was spending accounted for also its critique. In the around 5 to 10 per cent 18th century, this was of GDP. (Today the fig- largely Tory, memorably ure is nearly 50 per cent.) expressed by Jonathan The foreign office under Swift in Gulliver’s Trav- Lord Palmerston in the els. Swift was a high- 1830s contained pre- Anglican Tory who cisely 45 people. In India, railed against Walpole’s as Darwin reminds us, Whigs: the merchants, 250m people were gov- shop keepers and grand erned by an administra- financiers, the “mon- tive class of fewer than ied interest” who bene- 1000; in Sudan, a district fited from overseas trade commissioner, barely 25 and aggressively sup- years old, would admin- ported war with France. ister an area the size In his cool and impas- of Wales with perhaps sive style, Swift recounts 100,000 inhabitants. how imperial forces “see The attempt to find a a harmless people, and single reason that might entertained with kind- explain the chaotic proc- ness: they give the coun- ess by which such forms try a new name: they of governance came take formal possession of about is doomed to fail. it for a king… they mur- British imperialism had a der two or three dozen peculiar and inconsistent natives… return home, character. As JR Seeley, and get their pardon. the 19th-century histo- Here commences new rian, put it: “The Brit- dominion, acquired with ish empire was acquired a title by divine right.” in a fit of absence of In recent years the mind.” Individual initi- case for the virtues of ative, eccentricity, and imperialism was revived chaotic forms of leader- French cartoon from 1898: China is being carved up by (left to right) Queen by neoconservative ship played a much big- Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicolas II, the French Marianne, and the Meiji thinkers. Niall Ferguson ger role in the imperial Emperor of Japan as, behind them, a Qing official protests in vain led this charge, story than the more gen- with books such as eral concepts of racism, gender relations, and free trade. Darwin’s Colossus and Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (it is Unfinished Empire does address some of this eccentricity, but it is appropriate, perhaps, that the latter was published in 2003, perhaps too broad in its approach to show how contingency and the very year in which the “coalition of the willing,” led by the sheer chance shaped the course of events in the widely different US, toppled Saddam Hussein). Neoconservatives pined for a political contexts of the vast British empire. new global empire and looked back with fondness to the British empire as a model for global governance. The neoconservative efreshingly, though, Darwin’s eclectic approach is not view is, in many ways, simply a revival of the old Whig empire ideologically committed, and this allows him to build trumpeted by Macaulay and Mill; yet it is simplistic and naive an authoritative account of the multiple empires that in its cheerleading for global power, mistakenly viewing the US have been conjured up by historians and political empire as a successor of the British empire when its avowed Rwriters. He discusses the Whig empire of Victorian intellectu- beliefs and means of exerting global influence are so different. als such as Thomas Macaulay and John Stuart Mill, who essen- Yet none of these visions of empire tells the whole story. The tially saw Britain’s role as a progressive force in world history. Whigs and the neoconservatives are right to stress the role of the As Macaulay, in his fulsome rhetoric, proclaimed in a speech in rule of law in imperial government, although their understanding the House of Commons in 1833, the East India Company’s rule of the motivations and culture is flawed. Marxists are justified “commenced a great, a stupendous process—the reconstruction in looking at the economic basis, but to explain it exclusively in of a decomposed society” wrecked by “all the evils of despotism those terms is grossly misleading. While an economic motive and the evils of anarchy.” Mill, in a similar vein, said in On Liberty is obviously behind the East India Company’s involvement in (1859) that “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in India, such motives are less easy to discern in the administrations dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.” of Nigeria, Sudan, and even the Gold Coast in the early-20th It is not difficult to see how this was used to justifyB ritish rule in century, where imperial expansion was driven in no small part by Asia and, later, in Africa. the sense of adventure, an ill-defined yearning for significance, 52 legacy of empire prospect september 2012

and an equally nebulous sense of national pride. The eccentric Through biographies of figures such as al-Afghani—revered characters often attracted to imperial service are surprisingly today as an “intellectual godfather of the Islamic revolution”— unmaterialistic, taken as a group. General Gordon was famously Mishra attempts to show how the reactions of eastern intellectu- bored by money and saw, like many others, the imperial mission als to western power continue to influence modern politics and as grander than a mere commercial raid. Ultimately, these ideology. He recounts with enthusiasm how “left-wing secular- ideologically driven histories, because they fail to pay close ists as well as Islamists, pan-Arabists and pan-Islamists in Mus- enough attention to the people involved in the imperial struggle, lim countries as disparate as Egypt, Turkey, India, Pakistan, provide a skewed account of empire and its legacy. Afghanistan, and Malaysia regard al-Afghani as a pathbreaking Pankaj Mishra’s new book, From the Ruins of Empire, does not anti-imperialist leader and thinker.” make the same mistake. The subtitle of the book, “The revolt Al-Afghani was particularly concerned with the extent to against the west and the remaking of Asia,” announces its bold which western countries had extended their power through sci- theme. Mishra’s focus is on the role that various Asian intellec- ence and education, while the east, as he saw it, had declined. He tuals from India, China, and the Middle East played in rejecting loathed the British, ridiculing the idea that they were in India for western imperialism. the good of the Indians. To al-Afghani, the British terrorised and “The revolt against the west” is obviously more extensive than exploited all Indians, and sent the spoils back home. just a revolt against the British empire; this book is instead based Al-Afghani formulated a theory that was a progenitor of mod- around “the most intelligent and sensitive people in the east,” ern Islamism. He believed that all Muslims, wherever they lived, and their responses to “the extraordinary sequence of events and would have to catch up with the west. He decried the ignorance he believed was fostered in madrassas and the resulting subjugation “Mishra’s argument is that of Islam by a scientifically-minded west. In a speech in 1870 he exhorted his fellow Muslims to “arise from the sleep of neglect.” western accounts of The same year, he reiterated that the subjugation of Asian peoples had “happened from lack of vigilance, laziness, working too imperialism fail to grasp how little and stupidity” before asking: “Are we not going to take an the modern world was formed” example from the civilised nations?” One forgets just how mobile some intellectuals in the late 19th movements—the Indian Mutiny, Anglo-Afghan Wars, Ottoman century were. Al-Afghani travelled to Moscow where he agitated modernisation, Turkish and Arab nationalism, the Russo-Japa- against British influence in central Asia, particularly in Afghani- nese War, the Chinese Revolution, the First World War, the Paris stan and Kashmir. He was familiar with London, from where he Peace Conference, Japanese militarism, decolonisation, postco- denounced the corrupt Persian regime in Tehran. lonial nationalism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism—that Mishra traces their travels and influence across the continent, together decided the present shape of Asia.” living up to the book’s mission of describing the east’s “revolt Mishra’s argument is that current accounts of western impe- against the west and the remaking of Asia.” Ultimately, he breaks rialism fail to understand how the modern world was formed, new ground in his focus on responses to empire from articulate because they focus on the rulers and not the ruled. While the people whose origins lay outside Britain. exploits of Cecil Rhodes and General Gordon are familiar to peo- Mishra is no fan of the British empire and its history in Asia; ple with a passing interest in the history of the British empire, his prose is often polemical, and his account lacks the detached Asian intellectuals such as Phan Boi Chau and Jamal al-Din al- objectivity of Darwin’s general history. Yet From the Ruins of Afghani are less well known. Yet it was the ideas of these thinkers Empire benefits from his sensitivity to the people and times of that shaped the revolt against western imperialism in Asia. which he writes. By writing from outside traditional western ide- British historians often incorporate accounts of the 19th- ology, and by affording his sources the detail and attention they century Opium wars into their narratives, but very few of them require, Mishra has provided a bold, fresh, and much appreciated engage with the legacy of Li Hong Xhang, an eminent states- perspective on the history of empire. man of the late-Qing empire. Yet for Mishra, the “revolt against the west” was a phenomenon with origins in Beijing, Tokyo, and Shanghai as well as in the more familiar centres of western imperial power, such as Cairo, Delhi, and Calcutta. This shift in focus makes empire, and the wider nature of east–west relations, particularly relevant in the 21st century, when the relative economic decline of the west is set against the backdrop of emerging economies such as China, India, and even Turkey, whose GDPs have grown at rates of over 6 per cent a year in the last 15 years. Yet Mishra avoids unhelpful generalities by focusing on two protagonists: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, an Islamic activist who travelled widely throughout the Middle East in the 19th century; and Liang Qichao, a Chinese journalist and philosopher during the late Qing dynasty. Mishra presents them as examples of how Asian thinkers responded to empire: by returning to intellectual traditions in order to provide alternatives to the western politics and culture to which they were subjected; and by seeking to mod- ernise Asian societies in order to overthrow imperial powers. It’s arrived… The App Read Prospect anywhere, anytime The latest issue instantly in your hands Buy this month’s issue, back issues or an annual subscription

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Applestore Android Store 54 prospect september 2012 Get your kicks The Premier League has undermined the traditions of English football. Why do we keep watching? dj taylor

n the end defeat, though long awaited, took some time to investors) are disconcertingly new, a whole new value system ripe declare itself. Finally, at 10.24pm on a sultry mid-June to compromise the myths that give the game its resonance. Is night in Kiev, after 120 minutes of creative stalemate and English football still true to its original spirit? Or, to put it more a morale-sapping penalty shoot-out, the fatal moment starkly, what kind of sporting-cum-commercial behemoth has came. Ashley Cole, England’s tabloid-haunted full back, been created here, and at what cost? Iscuffed the ball slantwise into the gloves of GianluigiB uffon, the case-hardened Italian goalkeeper, whereupon Alessandro Dia- he beetle-browed gravity with which the British media manti, a player previously thought surplus to requirements by turns its eye on association football never ceases to the English Premier League, stepped up to put the quarter-final astonish foreign onlookers. From the public utility angle, tie out of reach. this astonishment is well worth registering, for there is a As ever on these occasions a fine variety of facial expressions Tway in which what passes for national discourse in this country was on display. Roy Hodgson, the England manager, looked even takes place in interstices, “in between talking about the football,” more like one of those sorry Shakespearian jesters, stranded on as the Scottish writer Gordon Legge titled his 1991 short story col- the blasted heath, fearful of losing his head. The English fans—a lection. On the other, the “it’s only a game” argument occasion- quivering wedge of red-and-white sports shirts and ripely perspir- ally wielded against these constituencies manifestly won’t do. The ing foreheads—hollered and wept. Back on the pitch the players simple things you see in football are invariably much more com- looked peevishly indignant, like a gang of bricklayers ticked off by plicated than they look, so self-evidently more than the spectacle their foreman for a wall built several inches out of trim. Italy were of 22 young men kicking lumps out of each other while a baying through, and we weren’t. The Euro 2012 dream was over. crowd chants obscenities in the background. Within seconds the post-match recriminations had begun. To begin with there is English football’s infallible link with Had Wayne shown up? Had Andy Carroll, the big, pony-tailed, English nationalism, that by now almost mythical invocation of Number 9 justified his selection? In fact, the press response was the green sward of Wembley Stadium in 1966 on which Bobby oddly muted. Most English tournament campaigns open in a Charlton and Geoff Hurst saw off the embarrassed German blaze of rapt, proleptic glory, the Silvo already bought to burnish hordes in a metaphorical equivalent of World War III. Then the trophy, the dim-wit predictions that Glenn, or Sven can do it there is football’s historic status as one of the few reliable chan- buzzing through the TV studio ether. This time round, alterna- nels of working-class self-advancement. Even today, in a world tively, a chill wind of realism had been blowing through the Eng- of vastly expanded educational opportunity, England’s leading land camp and expectations were lowered from the start. players hail from an instantly recognisable demographic: the England’s players, a host of commentators rushed up to sparsely educated and under-qualified working- to lower-mid- assure us, simply weren’t as accomplished as their continental dle-class, where a GSCE is a big event. rivals. The general opinion was that Our Boys were technically All this leads us to the third aspect of football’s well-nigh unique limited, while advertising welcome qualities of doggedness and significance toB ritish life: its extraordinary commercial heft.T he application, and that Hodgson should be congratulated for tak- recent auction of televised football rights raked in £3bn for the ing them as far as he had. And now, gentlemen, it was time for a not exactly poverty-stricken Premier League: a sum that even its short vacation, a rest from all this seething but essentially facti- chief executive, Richard Scudamore, had the grace to look faintly tious emotion, before the really serious business of the 2012/13 embarrassed about. Success brings instant rewards: even my own Premier League recommenced. club, the deeply unfashionable Norwich City, have upped their And a really serious business it definitely is: turning over bil- turnover from £17m to £75m after a two-year canter from League lions, making Croesuses of its elite performers, silhouetting any- One into the top tier. Yet more enticing, to a wily overseas inves- one at large in its upper echelon in the celebrity-ville searchlight. tor, is its genuine international compass. The big transatlantic pas- The national obsession with football is very old—the clerks in PG times barely exist beyond their national boundary lines, whereas Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City (1910) talk of nothing else—and the top six English sides spend the close season on lucrative tours yet the impulses that currently govern it (money, TV, overseas of the Far East. As brands go, this is a marketeer’s dream. By chance, England’s Euro campaign coincided with the DJ Taylor’s most recent novel is “Secondhand Daylight” (Corsair) publication of Richer than God: Manchester City, Modern Football prospect september 2012 get your kicks 55 I m ag es Getty vi a FC Arsen a l © The Arsenal team salute fans in Beijing this summer: top clubs are detached from the local communities that once sustained them and Growing Up, by the sports journalist David Conn. As a con- Young Wayne’s work-outs in the four international tournaments in noisseur of crook agents and boardroom cupidity, Conn has no which England’s most influential footballer has thus far disported difficulty in exposing some of the consequences of the game’s himself have been consistently short on results. new-found corporatism. But he also has a rheumy eye for some of that corporatism’s knock-on effects.O ne of these, naturally, is o the friction caused by an absurdly wealthy sport that the increasing detachment of the top clubs from the localities in concentrates its riches on the upper five per cent of its which they reside, and the local patriotism that previously sus- personnel can be added the tensions brought about by tained them. football’s two contending traditions. The professional Another is the lopsidedness of the fiscal take: if the finances Tgame as we know it came into existence in the north of England of Chelsea, winners of the 2012 Champions League, would be in the late 19th century when works sides quietly began to pay irrevocably shot in the absence of their cheque-wielding propri- some of their players. Yet the codification of the sport, and its etor Roman Abramovich, then perhaps a quarter of the clubs moral underpinning, was, essentially, an amateur project. The beyond the Premier League perimeter fence would be found to Football Association, for example, founded in 1863, consisted of be trading illegally were the standard financial tests applied. the representatives of public school old boys’ clubs based in the A third, ominously enough, is the long-term mediocrity of the soft, gentlemanly south. national team. The Premier League may be a roaring interna- Naturally the northern professionals soon disposed of lah- tional success, but the majority of the players at large in its upper di-dah Home Counties competition (although the celebrated levels aren’t local. For all the talk of nurturing young talent, the amateur side The Corinthians were still going strong in cup odds on an English teenager turning out for his nearest Premier competitions well into the 1930s). But what might be called the League club grow longer by the week. Corinthian spirit, with its emphasis on “playing the game” and The constant cutting of the generational pack, which sees fewer the competing being more important than the winning, proved and fewer Englishmen involved in the upper levels of the English unexpectedly durable. The boys’ school stories of the inter-war game, has not gone unremarked. One enduring sports-page sub- era, wish-fulfilment fantasies aimed at children a great deal text is the precedence that Premier League activities tend to take further down the educational scale, were bent on propagating over national commitments. Sir Alex Ferguson, a canny Scot, the amateur code. Their echo could be heard as much as half couldn’t care less about his players’ availability for England call- a century later in the pre-teen comic Roy of the Rovers, whose up. And where, if it comes to that, do Wayne Rooney’s loyalties lie? blond-haired hero plays for a professional club, but is a walking 56 get your kicks prospect september 2012

embodiment of the virtues of “sportsmanship” and “fair play.” ever do that again: the procedural difficulties and the squad con- All this had a profound effect on the generations of football straints are simply too great. Of the 20 clubs competing for this fans born into the world before telephone number salaries year’s league trophy only four—or possibly five—have a serious and Sky Sports. Members of the 1966 World Cup squad were chance of winning it. conceptualised for the mass audience in almost mythical terms: All this ought theoretically to inspire a dreadful cynicism Bobby Moore, the stalwart but scrupulous captain; Bobby among the intelligent fan, and yet somehow this abandonment Charlton, his unfailing, well-mannered sidekick. Its most natural rarely takes place. The myths are too resonant; the ancestral ties consequence, to anyone reared on this tradition of footballer as too sinewy; the glamour too seductive. Who would you prefer to moral agent, is a lurking resentment of the players for not living see on the pitch before you—European and World Cup-winning up to these exacting standards. A fantasy-commentary from David Silva, or Nowhere United’s Lee Fredge? Even David Conn Euro 2012 in which England players were rated merely for their found himself exulting over Manchester City’s last-ditch triumph activities off the pitch would go something like: the man who is in the league last season. To go back to unfancied Norwich, who up in court next month on a public order offence has passed it to the will spend the next nine months trying to avoid “second season man who in his autobiography declared himself slighted by only being syndrome,” it is possible to deduce that the playing field on which offered £55,000 a week, thereby freeing up the man whose car was the competition takes place is horribly uneven, and biased in half- burnt out as it lay in his driveway… a-dozen ways in the interests of the leading clubs, while exulting Footballers sometimes complain that they don’t set themselves in the fact that each alternate Saturday afternoon brings a new up as role models and shouldn’t be treated as such, to which the Premier League star strutting his stuff on theC arrow Road turf. answer is that there are children out there cutting your pictures In the same way, “objective” analyses of football nearly out of Match of the Day magazine, and the fan who applauds a wife- always founder on their inability to comprehend the vestigial beater for scoring the winning goal has lost sight of a principle that romanticism that, even now, attends the game. In his essay “The most ordinary people would rather want to be retained. And so Sporting Spirit,” inspired by the visit of the Moscow Dynamo the average supporter’s attitude to what takes place on the pitch XI to these shores in 1945, George Orwell remarked that: “Seri- is queerly double-edged. He was brought up to regard sport as a ous sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with romantic activity, whose satisfactions lie in the heroic feat and the hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadis- subtle twist of fortune. Meanwhile, down on the greensward the tic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus usual collection of brawny louts are snarling abuse at each other the shooting.” and tapping each other’s ankles when the referee’s back is turned. No doubt something similar could be said now, but it would Inevitably, these are false distinctions. I once spent an not be true. After all, if football really were entirely expedient instructive half hour in the company of Bobby Moore’s ghost- then a player who feigned injury in pursuit of a penalty would be writer: as he remarked, no hint of genitalia-exposing, table- regarded as a hero, whereas even Sir Alex appears to feel slightly bestriding “raucous Bobby” ever made it into print. On the other queasy about Ashley Young’s stage-managed tumbles in the hand, England’s 1966 World Cup campaign positively reeked of box. Simultaneously, the striking of moral attitudes about the the Corinthian Spirit. Alan Ball remembered coming back to game is rendered yet more problematic by its essential theat- the hotel room he shared with Nobby Stiles with £1,000 each in ricality, and the gradual elevation of the leading performers to cash, courtesy of their kind sponsors, and being so bewildered by subsidiary rungs on the international celebrity ladder. The per- the sight of so much ready money that they cascaded the notes sona dreamed up for tabloid love-rat Ashley Cole, for example, over each other’s heads. What had kept this attitude more or less is approximately as “real” as Katie Price or Kerry Katona; he intact through the first half of the 20th century was ready mon- is essentially a blank space on which the lower-end media can ey’s absence. The English game’s commercial turning point, project whatever they think, or don’t think, about the game. close inspection insists, was the early 1960s. The end of the max- Forty-six years on from that legendary encounter on the imum wage came about in 1961; the BBC’s Match of the Day pre- Wembley turf, English football is a curious, hybrid entity: a big miered in 1964. Two hulking juggernauts with the capacity to business, certainly, but one still constrained and to an extent change the game for ever—television and money—were on col- tempered by the tribal loyalties of its fans, awash with senti- lision course in an arena that had previously got by on paying ment, undermined and sometimes enlivened by chauvinism and spectators, lofty aims and thrift. accompanied on its journeys by a whole raft of moral baggage originally assembled at around the time of Queen Victoria’s wid- alf a century later, English football has gone the way owhood. Undoubtedly over the next ten years—and despite the of business in general. The big clubs have grown big- levelling effect of the new EU FA solvency rules, which will pro- ger and (with certain exceptions) more prosperous; hibit off-balance sheet financing by wealthy owners—all these the smaller clubs have grown smaller and more hard- tendencies will be exacerbated: more filthy lucre; more teenage Hup. Formerly run by people who were interested in the game and millionaires; more exorbitant ticket prices bent on excluding prepared to bring money into it, clubs are largely run by people ordinary supporters from the game. with less of an emotional stake who are keener on taking money And so this particular devotee, his 2012/13 season ticket safely out of it. The ancient link between football clubs and the commu- trousered, will go on supporting with at least some of his illusions nities from which they originally grew is irrevocably shattered. intact: that cash-strapped, talent-starved League Two Davids will Worse, the advent of huge salaries and over-priced season occasionally be able to bring down a Premier League Goliath; tickets has produced an unofficial cartel with a stranglehold that England has the scintilla of a chance in the 2014 World Cup; over the upper echelon of the English league. Twenty years ago and that the burly gentlemen at half-a-dozen Premier League a Norwich side assembled on a shoe-string almost carried off the grounds chanting “who’s the wanker in the black?” are still Roy of firstP remier League title. No club with this kind of funding will the Rovers fans at heart. “Handsome and intriguing, like a ghosthunter’s companion EXPLORING to a world that is – and isn’t – there” THE CITY FRANCINE STOCK ONSCREEN

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LATEST TITLES NOW AVAILABLE FOR AMAZON KINDLE AND OTHER E-READERS + DOWNLOAD THE FREE IPAD APP >> VISIT THE KINDLE AND ITUNES STORES FOR MORE INFORMATION 58 prospect september 2012 Science & technology © Diana Ong/SuperSt o ck Diana ©

by linguists by reference to the history of Riddled with irregularity the people who speak it. That’s often fascinating, but it does not yield general Why are languages so different—and disorderly? Philip Ball principles about how languages have developed—or how they will change in future. As Languages are extremely diverse, but they tle, exchange and negotiation of human they evolve, what guides their form? are not arbitrary. Behind the bewilder- culture. Linguists have long suspected that lan- ing, contradictory ways in which different Language has a logical job to do—to guage is like a game, in which individuals tongues conceptualise the world, we can convey information—and yet it is riddled in a group vie to impose their way of speak- sometimes discern order. Linguists have with irrationality: irregular verbs, random ing. We adopt words and phrases that we traditionally assumed that this reflects genders, silent vowels, ambiguous hom- hear, and help them propagate. Through the hardwired linguistic aptitude of the ophones. You’d think languages would face-to-face encounters, language evolves human brain. Yet recent scientific studies evolve towards an optimal state of conci- to reconcile our conflicting needs as speak- propose that language “universals” aren’t sion, but instead they accumulate quirks ers or listeners: when speaking, we want to simply prescribed by genes but that they that hinder learning, not only for foreign- say our bit with minimal effort—we want arise from the interaction between the ers but also for native speakers. language to be structurally simple. As lis- biology of human perception and the bus- These peculiarities have been explained teners, we want the meaning to be clear— prospect september 2012 science & technology 59 we want language to be informative. In sion of colour always follows the same hier- and language co-evolve in an interaction other words, speakers try to shift the effort archy. The simplest colour lexicons (such between biological predisposition and cul- onto listeners, and vice versa. as the Dugerm Dani language of New ture. In other words, the starting point for All this makes language what scientists Guinea) distinguish only black/dark and colour terms is not some inevitably distinct call a complex system. This means that it white/light. The next colour to be given a block of the spectrum, but neither do we involves many agents interacting with each separate word by cultures is always centred just divide up the spectrum any old how, other via fairly well-defined rules. From on the red part of the visible spectrum. because the human eye has different sensi- these interactions there typically emerges Then, according to Geiger, societies will tivity to different parts of it. Given this, we an organised, global mode of behaviour, adopt a word corresponding to yellow, then have to arrive at some consensus, not just but this cannot be deduced from the local green, then blue. Lazarus’s colour hierar- on which label to use, but on what is being rules alone. chy was forgotten until restated in almost labelled. During the past three decades, complex the same form in 1969 by Brent Berlin, an The Italian team devised a computer systems have become widely studied by anthropologist, and Paul Kay, a linguist, model of language evolution in which new computer modelling: you define a popula- when it was hailed as a major discovery in words arise through the game played by tion of agents, set the rules of engagement, modern linguistics. It showed a universal pairs of “agents”—a speaker and a listener. and let the system run. Here the methods regularity underlying the apparently arbi- In this model, the speaker uses words to and concepts of the hard sciences—not trary way language is used to describe the refer to objects in a scene, and if he or she so different to those that physicists use to world. uses a word that is new to the listener (for a model the behaviour of fundamental parti- new colour, say), there’s a chance that the cles or molecules—are being imported into listener will figure out what the word refers the traditionally empirical or narrative- “Russians find it odd that to and adopt it. Alternatively, the listener dominated subjects of the social sciences. an Englishman uses the might already have a word for that colour, This approach has notched up successes same term for light blue but choose to replace it with the new word in areas ranging from traffic flow to analy- anyway. The language of the population sis of economic markets. No one pretends (Russian: goluboy) and evolves from these exchanges. that a cultural artefact like language will dark blue (siniy)” For colour, our physiology influences ever be as tightly rule-bound or predictive this process, picking out some parts of the as physics or chemistry, yet a complex-sys- spectrum as more worthy of a distinct term tems view might still prove key to under- Berlin and Kay’s hypothesis has since than others. The crucial factor is how well standing how it evolves. fallen in and out of favour, and certainly we discriminate between similar colours— A significant success was recently there are exceptions to the scheme they we do that most poorly in the red, yellow- claimed by an Italian group of research- proposed. But the fundamental col- ish green and purple-violet parts (we can’t ers led by Vittorio Loreto, a physicist at the our hierarchy, at least in the early stages distinguish reds as well as we can blues, for University of Rome—La Sapienza. They (black/white, red, yellow/green, blue) example). looked at the favourite example among lin- remains generally accepted. The problem When researchers included this bias in guists of how language labels the objective is that no one could explain why this order- the colour-naming game, they found that world: the naming of colours. ing of colour exists. Why, for example, does generally accepted colour terms emerged When early anthropologists began to the blue of sky and sea, or the green of foli- in their population of agents in much study non-western languages in the 19th age, not occur as a word before the far less the same order proposed by Berlin and century, particularly those of pre-literate common red? Key: red, then violet, yellow, green, blue “savages,” they discovered that the famil- There are several schools of thought and orange. (Violet doesn’t quite fit. The iar European colour terms of red, yellow, about how colours get named. “Nativ- researchers think this is a consequence of blue, green and so on are not as natural as ists,” who include Berlin and Kay and how reddish hues occur at both ends of they may seem. Some indigenous people also Steven Pinker, the Harvard psycholo- the spectrum.) Importantly, they didn’t have far fewer colour terms. Many get by gist, argue that the way in which we attach get this sequence unless they incorporated with just three or four, so that, for example, words to concepts is innately determined the colour sensitivity of human vision, but “red” could refer to anything from green to by how we perceive the world. As Pinker neither was the sequence determined by orange, while blue, purple and black are all has put it, “the way we see colours deter- that alone—it arose out of the “inter-agent lumped together as types of black. mines how we learn words for them, not negotiations.” Inevitably, this was first considered vice versa.” In this view, often associated In other words, there’s nothing in the sheer backwardness. Researchers con- with Noam Chomsky, our perceptual physiology of vision that would let you cluded that such people were at an earlier apparatus has evolved to ensure that we guess a priori that red is going to emerge stage of evolution, with a defective sense of make “sensible”—that is, useful—choices first. And indeed, in the computer simula- vision that left them unable to tell the dif- of what to label with distinct words: we tions there’s initially no well-defined word ference between, say, black and blue. Once are hardwired for practical forms of lan- for red—it is only after some time that they started testing natives using colour guage. “Empiricists,” in contrast, argue a word stably referring to the red part of charts, however, they found them perfectly that we don’t need this innate program- the spectrum appears, followed later by capable of distinguishing blue from black— ming, just the capacity to learn the con- violet, and so on. Culture—the discourse the natives just saw no need to assign them ventional (but arbitrary) labels for things between agents in the population—is the different colour words. Uncomfortably for we can perceive. filter which extracts the labels that are western supremacists, we are in the same In both cases, the categories of things to most useful from the biological given of boat when it comes to blue, for Russians name are deemed “obvious”: language just colour vision. So both biology and culture find it odd that an Englishman uses the labels them. But the conclusions of Loreto are required to get it right. same basic term for light blue (Russian: and colleagues fit with a third possibility: The use of agent-based models to goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). the “culturist” view, which says that shared explore language evolution has been In the 1860s, the German philologist communication is needed to help organ- pioneered by Luc Steels of the Free Lazarus Geiger proposed that the subdivi- ise category formation, so that categories University of Brussels, who specialises 60 science & technology prospect september 2012

The month ahead ANJANA AHUJA

If you think the phrase “offshore havens” must be the prelude to a piece on tax scams, you haven’t been paying attention to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which is holding a wide-ranging inquiry on marine science. Are marine conservation zones, designated in 2009, helping or hindering coastal communities? And is the government doing enough to monitor global warming in the oceans? Submissions are due in by 19th September.

Birmingham, Sheffield, and Queen Mary in London are among the universities participating in Researchers’ Night, on 28th September. This Europe-wide feast of nocturnal

ewberry Library/SuperSt o ck N ewberry nosiness opens up research labs to © the curious. Queen Mary hopes its The Tower of Babel: a united humanity with a single language remains a distant dream visitors will build a Lego universe in Whitechapel; or you may prefer to in artificial intelligence; he wants to The modelling of Steels and colleagues munch along to the Naked Scientists’ know how to design robots that can showed that this sort of environmen- Crisp Packet Firework show. The develop a shared language. Steels and his tal pressure could tip the balance from a Natural History Museum is also taking co-workers have also used the acquisition brightness-based colour terminology to a part. of colour terms as their test case, and hue-based one. have previously argued in favour of the It is one thing to tell that story, another With political bloggers wielding such “cultural” picture that Loreto’s team now to show by computer modelling that it influence, how is the internet helping to supports. The computer modelling of really works in the complex give and take shape public policy? This and more will Steels’s group deserves much of the credit of discourse. It increasingly seems, then, be under discussion on 20th and 21st for starting to change the prevailing view that language is determined not simply by September at a conference organised of language acquisition from the influence how we are programmed, but by how it is by the Oxford Internet Institute. Social of genetic factors to that of culture and used and by what we need to say. networking and the way in which environment. Philip Ball’s latest book is “Curiosity: How political organisations mobilise their Steels and his colleagues Joris Bleys Science Became Interested in Everything” supporters will be dissected, as well as (Bodley Head) and Joachim de Beule, for example, have whether the wealth of data available presented an agent-based model of lan- online can be used to advance the social guage negotiation, similar to that used by ONLINE: The Dawkins debate rages on sciences Loreto’s team, which purports to explain In June, Richard Dawkins condemned how a colour-language system can change the latest book by Edward Wilson, the Head to Aberdeen from 4th to 9th from one based on differences in bright- renowned biologist, prompting a retort September for this year’s British Sci- ness (using words like “dark,” “light” and from Wilson and hundreds of others. ence Festival. Medical biologist Ann “shiny”) to one that makes distinctions of Now, on the Prospect website, Nobel Rajnicek will provide a recipe for grow- hue. The brightness system was used in laureate Brian Josephson has ing missing limbs and the University of Old English between around 600 and 1150, criticised Dawkins for his Hertfordshire’s Richard Wiseman will while Middle English (1150–1500) used “oversimplistic” ideas and explain how to have sweeter dreams; the hue-related words. A coeval switch was for failing “to follow granite city will also host familiar faces seen in other European languages, coincid- rigorous mathematical such as Iain Stewart and Bill Bryson. ing with the development of textile dyeing arguments when they Did I mention that yours truly will be across the continent. This technology, the transcend the ideas on there to pick up an honorary fellowship researchers say, altered the rules on what which he has built his from the British Science Association? needed to be communicated: people now reputation.” Ah, modesty forbids. had to talk about a wider range of colours Anjana Ahuja is a science writer of similar brightness but different hue. TWO THOUGHT-PROVOKING TITLES FROM BITEBACK THE MYTH OF CHOICE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY IN A WORLD OF LIMITS KENT GREENFIELD

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Prospect Ad MythofChoice Reframe.indd 1 15/08/2012 11:18 The Arab RevolutionS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Spend the day with activists and thinkers from the frontline

Activists, journalists, fi lm-makers, artists and musicians from the Arab region and the UK come together in a day of discussion, fi lm and debate. Hear up-to-the-minute Saturday 15 September updates from the frontlines of each revolution, giving you an insight your television never could. Plus fi lms, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Foyer, 10am to 8pm art and live gig from Egyptian band Eskenderella. Curated by Salma Said and hosted by Ahdaf Soueif Day ticket £12 Day ticket including Tickets 0844 847 9910 Eskenderella gig £22 southbankcentre.co.uk Eskenderella gig only (starts at 8.30pm) £15 prospect september 2012 the economic impact of the arab spring 63

September 2012 The economic impact of the Arab Spring Political upheaval across North Africa and the Middle East has created pockets of success. Can this bring long-term growth?

Claire Spencer: New politics, but old economics Sheila Patel: Private equity boom Matteo Fagotto: A haven of prosperity in Iraq Energy markets: Calm, but for how long?

erty rate of 3.8 per cent in 2005. Following the revolution, however, in September 2011 Reform, round two the National Statistics Institute published revised poverty estimates which show that The Arab world has new politics—now it needs new the national average poverty rate in 2005 economics, says Claire Spencer was 11.8 per cent. Egypt’s official statistics, including those on population, also seem to have been approximate fictions at best. ith the benefit of hindsight, and, in most cases, reforming it completely, In the meantime, previously the political challenges are now the real Herculean tasks. underestimated factors in these economies unleashed by the Arab In examining how the economies of the have become more significant this year.T he Spring may look like the Middle East and North African region have first is the extent of public corruption and easy part to resolve, at least fared over the last 18 months, it is tempting the “disappearance” of official funding lines, Wfor those nations that overthrew their leaders to start with official statistics. both of which have increased in Egypt since this year. Getting the economy back on track For a start, they have been produced for the fall of the Mubarak presidency. A report international consumption by authoritarian issued in July by the Shura Council, Egypt’s Claire Spencer is head of the North Africa and regimes. In Tunisia, official poverty num- upper house of parliament, cited 65,000 Middle East programme at Chatham House bers had previously reported a national pov- separate examples of corruption and the © reuters at least 25 per cent of annual state expend consumefuel,and bread aboveallgoods, politics. in basis markets. the country realising its potential in global of the market. For most observers, the reform its economy does not obey the basic rules of tral bank and because of loans and subsidies from thecurrentand spending onlycennowpossibleis the long-delayed agreement of an I uprising. ofthe ily’swealth, mean that theforeign reserves the unsolved mysteries of the capitalflight, the effects corruptionof and together with investment 2011, eign since echoed across North Africa. formal fiscal and legal controls—a situation unmonitoredandexists entirely outside all economicactivity untaxed,is unregulated, T thatinformalcent.peris44much as as is thatproportiontheof stance. debilitating currency devaluation a have bankruptcy and imminent sub for heading International financial and economic reporting at all. region,whichfactorednotare intoofficial of the informal, or parallel, economiesmonths. of the misappropriation of state funds in the last 12 A stall selling festival lights at the Khan el-Khalili market in Cairo, where “divisions persist between urban rich and poor” 64 i mas ht ut ne hl o all of half under just that means his E B In gypt’smarket to key flawsthe be will ut E E E T gypt, headlinesgypt,that countrytheis gyptianstate have halved since the T he drop in tourist revenues and for gypt’s much larger problem is that T T heother factor is the importance e an itrin hv their have distortions main he e onr hs ald o solve to failed has country he M S audi Arabia. onetary Fund has estimated S ae usde o basic on subsidies tate M orocco’seconomy M ubarak fam M F loan T he - - - - - the economic impact of the arab spring arab the of impact economic the authorities). whichcontrols thepolice andenforcement interior, of ministry (including theistries new interests that now co-exist in andmost networks old hampered the are by ofmin sue their ends. Legal and regulatory reforms the thehidden practices and interest groups of entrepreneurs.of sometime,samethe At has become the mission of a few,behave mostly ethicallynew, and for the benefit of others result. tation of the private sector has suffered as a fixture of public conversation, and thecorruption repu during the tionaryera politics. In pre-revolu of shadow the escape tohave unemployed populations. providetheirforlargelyjobs youthful and mindedgovernments alike, theyasseek to less-reform- reformed and mantra of new the become enterprises has medium and inthe region. Indeed, the creation ofsmall theurgent,mostofone necessary reforms inglegal protection for businesses must be and private economies. its continuing influence over landuse and business permits is central to taryestablishment’s control of licences for per cent of these subsidies appear to benefit the top 20 the poverty line from starvation. In reality, the 40 per cent of cent per 40 the keepingostensiblyareataimed itureand B R B t n rfrs n hs ieto will direction this in reforms any ut emoving market distortions and provid en Ali era continue, sotto voce, to pur T heidea that private businesses can E gyptians. R ivalriesbetween old and new E gypt’spopulationon M B T en Alieneranowis a unisia,the scale of eanwhile, the mili E gypt’s public ------that the failure of the new, and not-so-new, participatoryeconomic more systems. for way the opened hasparticipatory 2011morepoliticssince needs to be straightened out first. economy(above thatallthearmy)of that the in interference and over control ical the opposite. It is the marketplace for polit the private sector or market reforms—quite heading the interim government, is against thethat not is hp ht tl controls still that ship leadermilitarythewith policyeconomic them,have consensus failed find a toover withthemajority theelectorateof behind are themselves internally divided and, even ( between small(but few medium-sized) enterprises; tors; between large sec privateconglomerates and publicand very the between ers; farm subsistence rural and dwellers city betweenthe urban rich and poor; between aig lc. In place. taking of signs limited only shows began) 2011 under-investedinteriorprovincesuprisings of the(wherethe to areas coastal ent resourcestionoffrom therelatively afflu T In holding powerit.to used arewho thosefrom economic and financial wrest sufficient to been not has imperfect, ever also stymie each other’s initiatives. employers’federations and workers’ unions S nsa te uhnee redistribu much-needed the unisia, alafists and the and alafists T In short, the arrival of democracy, how i rie te usin f hte a whether of question the raises his C opts and prospect september 2012 september prospect M uslim E T M yt dvsos persist divisions gypt, M here is a real possibility uslims. uslim B E rotherhood,now gypt’s affairs. It affairs. gypt’s B T rotherhood) he Islamists ------prospect september 2012 the economic impact of the arab spring 65 leaderships of the region to come to grips together with Libya, whose political future Ultimately, all of the states have suffi- with economic reform will undermine the remains a work-in-progress. Under Colonel cient competitive advantages to follow the political gains of the Arab Spring. Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s foreign earn- development paths taken by the Asian and Not that the region should be thought ings were derived almost entirely (97 per Latin American economies to which they of as a single bloc. First, the oil and gas cent) from hydrocarbon exports, and the are often, unfavourably, compared. It is no exporting states of the Gulf and Algeria country now runs the risk that oil rent will longer the case that their political systems have escaped lightly from last year’s popular be recentralised into a few hands once the are so inherently constrained that they will activism, using government income from sector fully recovers. This prize is perhaps inevitably fail to break free from the past. high oil prices to invest in infrastructure and the main reason why the internal struggles But the region’s current lack of enlightened buy off domestic discontent. An interesting of Libyan politics are quite so intense: the leadership is not helping to ensure that a side-story is developing in Iraq, which militias, tribal confederations, east-west more diverse and inclusive set of economies could function in the future as two separate regional power bases and new and old polit- will prevail over the old, tried and tested hydrocarbon exporting “sub-states.” The ical alliances all want to secure their piece of ways of doing business. regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan the hydrocarbon action. Islamist parties, which control the gov- (KRG) has recently concluded two oil A third tier of states, such as Morocco ernments of Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, exploration contracts with US oil companies and, to a lesser extent, Jordan, has been will inevitably colour the economic choices (Exxon Mobil in 2011 and Chevron in 2012) engineering economic change within those countries now make, but only if the and one with Total, the French company, modified, but not radically altered, polit- old guard lets them. As long as the eco- over the head of Baghdad, where the Arab- ical structures. With fewer hydrocarbon nomic powerbrokers of the past remain majority Maliki government is struggling resources and high import bills for both in place, no amount of electioneering or to bring the Kurds into line over the central energy and basic foodstuffs, these govern- “sharia-friendly” legislation will shift the control of Iraq’s natural resources. ments’ options for rapid and fundamen- balance of influence in favour of the Islam- The second category within the MENA tal reform are limited. Instead, they are ists. As in Europe’s own history, he or she bloc is made up of the “post-Arab Spring” engaged in a strategic juggling act to cre- who controls the purse strings and the states, found mostly in North Africa, where ate new jobs, above all in the private sector, exercise of law controls the affairs of state. Tunisia and Egypt have emerged with more while seeking to maintain their overall con- None of the new leaders of the region have or less coherent transitional governments, trol of the economy from the centre. achieved full control of either.

Finally, choosing the right private equity manager remains critical, espe- Private equity boom cially when operating in emerging markets and the Middle East, where Private equity is the exciting bet for long-term investment in transparency and information flow is lim- the Middle East, says Sheila Patel ited. Regional market experts estimate that between 10 and 30 per cent of private equity investments in the region are Given the political uncertainty in the Mid- private equity funds under management unannounced. There is also a huge dis- dle East, many anticipated that investors in the region was $23.2bn in 2011, up from parity of returns in these investments, so would shy away from the region. How- $8bn in 2006 doing due diligence on your managers is ever, the Middle East has continued to This industry has been lucrative during very important. attract international investors in the last periods of uncertainty and turmoil, when With the ongoing slowdown of more 18 months, and evidence suggests that the the very best private equity managers have mature markets, private equity invest- region will provide significant opportuni- been able to achieve strong returns com- ment opportunities in the Middle East are ties in the upcoming years. pared to public markets. Yet private equity set to grow—particularly as investors in A key characteristic of the investment funds tend to be longer-term investments this region are in a strong position to take market in the Middle East is the huge and are characterised by lower liquidity. advantage of their current liquidity. amount of liquidity many big institutions The average life of a private equity fund Sheila Patel is co-CEO of Goldman Sachs hold—cash, or assets that can be quickly in mature markets is ten years, while the Asset Management International and easily converted into cash. However, average life of funds in the Middle East is there is such a thing as too much liquid- four to five years.T his makes private equity ity. By putting assets to work, investors can funds a great fit for large institutional generate real, long-term value for their investors in the Middle East who can afford portfolios. to take a long-term perspective. One asset class that holds significant There are also ways of investing quickly untapped potential is the Middle East’s in private equity—for example, an inves- private equity market. Private equity firms tor might buy into a preexisting fund. The buy companies, make them more effi- benefit of this approach is that money can cient—and more valuable—then sell them be put to work straight away with a high at a profit. For many institutional investors, degree of visibility and clarity. now is a good time to include private equity Whether investing in private equity in their allocation of assets; many have directly or through a fund, it is very impor- already done so, but statistics from the tant to diversify holdings: by geography, industry suggest that their allocations have strategy, or by type of industry. Diversifica- considerable potential to expand. Accord- tion is important not only to increase the ing to the Private Equity Association in the chances of return by exploring a wide range Middle East & North Africa, the total of of opportunities, but also to reduce risk. “I think this one was a wealth creator” 66 the economic impact of the arab spring prospect september 2012

Erbil: capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. Petrodollars have earned it the name “the new Dubai”

independent Kurdish state. The government in Ankara remains highly sensitive Fastest growth on earth? to anything that might animate Turkey’s own large Kurdish population. But Turkish Kurdistan’s economy is thriving and investors are slowly overcoming companies have been investing in Kurdis- their fears, says Matteo Fagotto tan since 1996, well ahead of any other com- petitor, and those on the ground in Erbil perceive a smart long-term strategy by Tur- “In five years Kurdistan will achieve what is one of the main reasons behind the eco- key—especially if claims for self-determina- the Emirates did in 20. You will not be able nomic boom. Thanks to its ethnic homoge- tion among the 28m Kurds in Turkey, Iran to recognise it.” Looking down from the top neity and own armed forces, Kurdistan has and Syria begin to rise. “The Turkish plan floor of the 23-storey hotel where he works, become a safe haven for many Iraqis and was very clever: make this region economi- overlooking a landscape dotted with con- minority groups (Christians above all) who cally reliant on them to thwart its political struction cranes and new housing complexes, have fled the continuing violence in Mosul wings,” explains a foreign businesswoman Cem Saffari does not conceal his pride when and Baghdad. in Erbil, who asked not to be named asked why he moved from a comfortable life Although the region’s autonomy dates because of the sensitivity of the issue. in London to take up a job in Kurdistan, the back to the end of the first Gulf war, when So far, though, building a Kurdish autonomous north-eastern region of Iraq. the UN enforced a no-fly zone to protect state has not been the priority of the local “Pioneers always win,” he says. Kurds from the vengeance of Saddam, it authorities, who are busy trying to sus- A middle-aged Turk in a dark suit, Saf- is only since 2003 that Kurdistan has been tain the region’s recent rapid growth. The fari is the business development manager able to blossom, thanks to the lifting of lack of local expertise is a problem, and has of the luxury five-star Divan Hotel inE rbil, economic sanctions against Iraq. Turkey forced the KRG to lure foreign firms with the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Divan and Iran have been the quickest to invest. business-friendly regulations: ten-year tax cost $80m to build and has 228 rooms According to Fatih Ali Almudaris, an eco- exemptions; total ownership of companies whose prices range from $500 to $15,000 nomic relations advisor at the local minis- and repatriation of profits; cut-price land per night. Its clientele is the ever growing try of trade and industry, of the 1170 foreign for investment projects; and an economic number of businessmen willing to invest companies registered in Kurdistan, more philosophy that changed beyond recogni- in a region with 45bn barrels of oil reserves than half are Turkish. Turkish capital is tion from the state-driven policies of the and one of the fastest economic growth financing everything from construction to previous regime. rates on earth. oil installations, from jewellery boutiques Despite the undoubted opportunities, Erbil’s petrodollars and rapid growth to food products. “When we opened up, we there are still factors that discourage foreign have gained it the nickname of “the new needed everything and Turkey was there investment in Kurdistan. Of these, the oil Dubai” but local authorities prefer to with its expertise and quality,” explains disputes between Kurdistan and the central define Kurdistan as “the other Iraq.” The Almudaris. government of Iraq loom over the region’s security that the Kurdish Regional Gov- Turkey’s investment might appear at future. While the national constitution enti- ernment (KRG) has been able to provide odds with the country’s opposition to an tles Kurdistan to 17 per cent of Iraq’s total

68 the economic impact of the arab spring prospect september 2012

oil revenues (some $83bn in 2011), Erbil and Despite these uncertainties, Kurds are used to thinking beyond these mountains,” Baghdad are constantly bickering over the optimistic about what foreign investment he explains, sitting in the garden of his café authority to grant exploration contracts might bring. “It’s a virgin territory,” says and looking at the peaks that encircle the in the region. The oil ministry in Baghdad 30-year-old Jamal Penjweny. Ten years city. “Not only has the economy grown fast, claims that two recent deals signed between ago, Penjweny was a shepherd. Now he but also the mentality of the people.” the KRG and US oil giants Exxon Mobil and roves from consulting for oil companies to Kurdish authorities will hope that this Chevron are illegal, and has forbidden both working as a photographer to managing a confidence, coupled with the region’s rela- companies from taking part in upcoming small café in the centre of Sulaymaniyah, tive stability and the extent of opportunities national auctions for oil exploration rights— the region’s cultural hub. Penjweny’s pic- that exist there, will overcome any doubts a sanction that has, until now, kept other tures of Kurdistan have been exhibited in for investors in the end. major oil companies away. the US and Europe. “Before, we weren’t Matteo Fagotto is a journalist based in Beirut

war in 1991. Crude prices soared by over 300 per cent in the aftermath of both the Oil flows despiteS pring Arab oil embargo and the Iranian revolution (the region’s share of global oil output There has been little disruption to the global supply of oil. But for was much higher at the time). But what is threatening to dwarf any how much longer? Said Hirsh previous supply disruptions is an event seemingly unrelated to the Arab Spring: a potential full-scale conflict with Iran over The impact of the Arab Spring on the rest world’s total, before social unrest broke its nuclear programme. Israel and the US of the world is perhaps best manifested by out. The halt to Libya’s output led to Brent have said that they do not rule out military the spike in oil prices due to fears of sup- prices rising by over $10 per barrel. Mean- action and the US, the United Nations and ply disruptions. But early concerns were while, western sanctions on Syria and the European Union are tightening sanc- overdone—revolution did not reach the political turmoil in Yemen affected out- tions. A fifth of global oil supply currently oil-rich Gulf countries. Instead, the big- put in both countries. But these are minor passes through the Strait of Hormuz and ger factor keeping upward pressure on producers. Disruption was also caused by if Iran were to act on its threat by block- oil prices is the concern that simmering repeated attacks on Egyptian gas lines, ing the Strait, this could result in the loss tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in halting exports to Jordan and Israel, but of some 15m b/d from global supply. Even the region, coupled with the west’s tough this was of minimal global consequence. if this lasted only a few days, Brent crude stance on Iran’s nuclear programme, Compared with previous conflicts in the prices could rise by $50 per barrel. might soon drag the Arab world into a full- Middle East, the disruptions to oil supplies Followers of Middle Eastern affairs scale conflict. due to the Arab Spring were not especially have become accustomed to doomsday The biggest disruption to oil supplies large—nothing like the 5m b/d fall during scenarios. But while it is easy to assume as a result of the Arab Spring came from the Iranian revolution in 1979, or similar that Iran could be drawn into a wider Libya. The country produced around falls during the Arab oil embargo in 1974, regional conflict, the Iranian regime is 1.7m barrels a day (b/d), 2 per cent of the the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s or the Gulf not suicidal. The disastrous experience of neighbouring Iraq could act as a deter- rent. And the Gulf’s financial ability to withstand a period of disruption, as well as the region’s new pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz, reduces the impact of a temporary closure of the Strait. Instead, Iran will probably continue to involve itself with proxy wars in other parts of the region, such as in Syria. Regional change, such as the rise of Islamists in North Africa, has created opportunities for Iran. Tensions between Iran and the Gulf are likely to be settled away from their own home territory. Mar- kets must get used to a long period of instability in the region—but unless this develops into a full-scale regional conflict, growing concerns over oil supplies from the Gulf are probably exaggerated. Eventually, the weak global economy and its impact on demand will outweigh supply fears, reducing oil prices. And in time, it may be the boom in energy supply elsewhere in the world—notably in US shale— that transforms energy markets for the better. r eute s

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ĂŶŬŽĨ>ŽŶĚŽŶĂŶĚdŚĞDŝĚĚůĞĂƐƚŝƐĂĐŽŵƉĂŶǇƌĞŐŝƐƚĞƌĞĚŝŶŶŐůĂŶĚĂŶĚtĂůĞƐ͕ĐŽŵƉĂŶǇŶƵŵďĞƌϱϴϵϳϳϴϲĂŶĚƌĞŐŝƐƚĞƌĞĚŽĸĐĞ at Sherborne House, 119 Cannon Street, London, EC4N 5AT. BLME is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. 70 prospect september 2012 Life Food phonies 70 Leith on life: Moth attacks! 72 The art of wine making 73

Food phonies

in their devotion to authenticity, but flipping through bygone cookbooks rarely leaves a person licking their lips. Most of it is revolt- Have the foodies had their day? Hephzibah Anderson ing. A decade hence, aren’t Heston Blu- menthal’s spruce-spritzed mince pies likely to seem just as off-putting? In truth, some The Towngate Tea Room and Deli in the vil- moment appears to be waning. It’s ripe for molecular gastronomical creations (gorgon- lage of Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, opened the sending up, of course, and not just from zola cheese volleyball, anyone?) don’t sound in March 2009. Before then, hungry hikers the usual satirical sources (see, for exam- all that far removed from foodstuffs you’ll and pilgrims to Sylvia Plath’s final resting ple, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s televi- find at the nether-end of the dining scale place could pick from two pubs, one of which sion series The Trip). Some of gastroculture’s (I’m thinking Turkey Twizzlers and Tater offers a “pie, peas and a pint” special. In the chief evangelists are also getting in on the Tots). Naturally, devotees insist that ideas Tea Room, the cakes are housed in a tower- act. Anthony Bourdain has published a flow in the opposite direction: high-foodism ing glass display case. The coffee and walnut graphic novel skewering it. Ted Allen, who is to the average plate as the Milan catwalk sponge is uncommonly good. Savoury fare hosts a show on America’s Food Network, is to the high street. But while it’s true that is proffered on laminated menus, propped has appeared in a video for The Onion in nouvelle cuisine, for instance, brought us between the salt and pepper pots on Ikea which he prepares “a stupidass trendy piece the Roux Brothers—“the Beatles of gastron- pine tables. Sandwiches are toasted, jacket of fish coated in some kind of nut you’ve omy,” as Heston described them—couldn’t a spuds come variously filled, and breakfast never heard of served alongside a purée of case be made for Delia Smith having had far lasts all day. Then there’s the “balsamic baby something-or-other.” Earlier this year, more impact on what we actually cook? reduction.” Of the many contradictions that this Gastroculture has a lot to answer for. As “Food, which has long sprawling cultural phenomenon presents, well as daubing the nation’s plates with foams one of the most striking is that while we and emulsions, it’s made celebrities of chefs, been a staple of lifestyle, can seemingly gobble up hours of televi- and chefs of celebrities, providing lucrative has also become sion shows whose contestants use tweezers publishing deals to both, not to mention to pluck leaves from basil plants, we don’t spin-off saucepan lines and ready-meals. It’s religion, theatre, have time to make supper for our kids. But if monopolised television schedules and made environmentalism, gastroculture isn’t really about cooking, it’s forays onto the big screen dressed up as a not so much about eating, either. Luxe res- quest (Eat Pray Love), a crusade (Food, Inc.) fashion, even sex” taurant culture has thrived in the past dec- and a rodent with a dream (Ratatouille). It’s ade, but as any food critic will tell you, the spawned live events and even muscled its way the Cooking Channel itself launched a spoof food is only a small part of the dining experi- into music festivals via gourmet food trucks series on its website titled “Fodder.” To this ence. I know of one restaurant where diners and VIP dining tickets. Internationally, our list we may now add a new book by Steven are asked not only if the music is too loud, appetite for all things gastro has promoted Poole, the author who called time on the but also whether the room temperature is to high-end foodie multiplexes like Eataly, mumbo-jumbo he dubbed “unspeak” and their liking. which is plotting outposts in Chicago and São seeks to do the same for gastroculture or Foodism often seems determined to Paolo after an initial expansion fromT urin to “foodism,” as he terms it in You Aren’t What defer eating. Take the slow food movement, New York City. And then there’s the culinary You Eat. A light but piquant polemic, its pub- for instance. This is not for the hungry, as I tourism, the urban foraging and the obses- lication is scheduled for “Super Thursday,” learnt a couple of years ago at a Fourth of sion with provenance. Food, which has long the same October date that sees the likes of July concert in the forest outside Wood- been a staple of “lifestyle,” has also become Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson release stock, New York but it could just as well religion, theatre, environmentalism, fashion, their shots at Christmas bestsellerdom. have been Hampstead’s Kenwood House. As even sex. Its reach is such that we’re still neol- Candidly, people who don’t like food the programme cantered from Schumann ogising to accommodate its girth: neurogas- give me the willies, yet I also run screaming to Copland our hosts—food writers both— tronomy, gastroporn, locavorism, molecular from anything involving cob nuts, heirloom passed around the dishes that made up their gastronomy. tomatoes or the word “artisanal.” If foodism “picnic.” I never did find out what was on my Yet having gone mainstream enough really is about to fizzle, it’s hard to imagine fork at any given moment, since no amount to have made it onto plasticised menus, its what its legacy will be. Foodists are slavish of applause proved long enough to accom- prospect september 2012 Life 71 Im ages t ion A sso c ia A r c hive/Press A Cheskin/P d Davi © “There is something at once decadent and abstemious about the way foodism elevates food to a higher plane than simple refuelling” modate their descriptions. Except for the spiritually searching. mas) or what we don’t eat (pork, beef). marinated watermelon, not a single food And it’s this, more than anything else, And you need only ask someone over 65 item seemed to have taken less than a week that unifies an otherwise diverse collection to describe the food of their childhood to to prepare. Oh, for a cheese and pickle sarnie of culinary stances. There is something at be reminded that taste really does contain on sliced white. once decadent and abstemious about the whole worlds. But there’s a chasm separating Foodism also promotes an obsession way foodism philosophises food, elevating that from the scents with which trendy chefs with invisible ingredients. At my local train it to a higher plane than simple refuelling, spritz their food and the headsets they hand station recently, free Nature Valley bars or else analysing its nutritional content to to diners. The self-consciousness of foodism were being thrust at passing commuters the point where you feel like you’re about to is what makes it all so deeply unpalatable. It with the cry: “May contain nuts!” It brought munch your way through a fistful of vitamin seems part of a broader weakness for phoni- to mind a scene from Michael Frayn’s latest pills. Carbs are demonised, pomegranates ness that’s made the creators of Instagram novel, Skios, in which an exasperated Greek (never local in the UK) and fish oil (sustain- so rich. And just like that mobile photo app, chef is quizzed by the organiser of an inter- ably caught?) are elixirs. Meanwhile, as was it has a homogenising effect even as it claims national banquet. Gluten-free, nut-free and noted in a recent article in The Atlantic, most to seek out and celebrate the local. salt-free are taken care of, but what about omnivores do not have a dilemma. They sim- Stripped of its primary role as a onion-free? He sighs. When he was a kid, ply want to get lunch. sustenance provider, much of the cooking just two sorts of food existed: “Was food, Gastroculture is insular and show-offy. that foodists champion looks like mere and was no food.” It is low-fat but ego-inflating, self-absorbed playing with food, which isn’t to say that It might be useful at this point to and self-satisfied. Yet ridiculous though its it can’t still be fun in the same way that consider the distinction between foodie component fads are, they often speak to making mud pies as a kid is fun (the (think Michael Winner) and foodist (let’s ancient urges, their herd-like stampedes rediscovery of tripe and brain and entrails say Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s recalling a time when food was a more com- as ingredients provides an identical yucky Dilemma). You knew where you were with munal endeavour. We sowed and harvested thrill, too). Though there is undoubtedly a foodie. There was jollity to their gluttony, together, we shared around a campfire, artistry involved, the culinary arts ought which was flaunted frankly and without swapped recipes and took our loaves to the properly to be called culinary crafts. Or pretence. By contrast the foodist (as Poole village oven. Likewise, food has always been perhaps domestic science, which despite notes, echoes of “nudist” are not unhelpful) used to express identity, whether through its $625 price tag, the six-volume Modernist claims to be ethically motivated or else what we eat (Sunday roasts, chicken kor- Cuisine essentially is. Co-written by 72 LIFE prospect september 2012 rey Coo l i d ge Je ff rey ©

Nathan Myhrvold, a theoretical physicist door dislodges one, and it tumbles down and and former chief technology officer of sticks firmly onto your hair, dead moths and Microsoft, it’s the Bible for sous-vide all, causing perturbation. cooking, an incredibly exact process that These traps, though, are more a form of originates in industrial food preparation entertainment than of eradication. It’s fun to and can sound a lot like boil-in-the-bag. Leith on life inspect your haul, but for every male moth A meal, be it Michelin-starred or made Sam Leith that meets its end french-kissing a pane of with love by grandma, will not leave you Pritt Stick, there are two whose noses—if feeling full in the same way as a Beethoven Attack of the moths they even have noses; I’ve looked quite close symphony. A similar point was made by self- up but they’re a bit too small and are usually confessed foodist Adam Gopnik earlier this “Another one! Get it! Quick! Get it!” For us, moving too fast to see—lead them to some year. He was taking part in a live discussion the sound of summer is not the merry tin- hot real female moth action, probably in on gastroculture hosted by Zócalo Public kle of the ice-cream van, nor the sizzle of the pocket of my favourite cardigan. As for Square, and went on to quote his daughter: sausage on barbecue: it is the sound of the mothballs, they are exactly as much use as “And tomorrow we’ll all be hungry again.” mother of my children going bananas about treating the bubonic plague with a poultice Tomorrow—that’s what really calls gas- the moths. Every summer, these little tan of larks’ tongues, say, or self-regulation in troculture’s bluff. Humankind faces very creatures—so delicate they turn to a smudge the financial services industry. real challenges in terms of feeding our- of dust under the thumb—take complete It’s not just the clothes. It’s the awful selves and feeding ourselves well. The glo- control of our lives. sense that your home has been invaded by a bal downturn has already brought some The victims of burglaries are always said fast-breeding tribe of metaphors. Moths are changes to the foodist landscape: the deci- to feel violated. Being invaded by moths is entropy in action. They take a highly improb- sion to close elBulli was made before Spain’s like being burgled from inside your home— able and ordered system—viz a wardrobe full hospitality industry fell into the clutches burgled from the very seams of your trou- of Christmas jumpers and unloved woollen of a crisis that has seen upscale restau- sers. Burgled by Gok Wan. Your wardrobe suits—and move it inexorably, albeit slowly, rants offering BYOB. Elsewhere, small fills with fluttering saboteurs who turn cash- in the direction of a tenebrous snowdrift of plates have replaced taster menus, and mere into crochet. Unfolding clothes is like evenly distributed mothshit, the sartorial food trucks and pop-up, cash-only eateries unfolding those home-made Christmas dec- equivalent of the heat death of the universe. are all the rage. The fact remains, however, orations that become a string of little men They are the objective correlative for my that despite farmers’ markets and meat- doing star-jumps. Surprise! creaky knees, my sore ankles, my growing less Mondays, despite Jamie Oliver’s ardent So you start small. You buy traps—white vagueness about the order in which things crusading and Michelle Obama’s organic oblongs of card smeared with something happened, my ebbing reserves of energy, vegetable patch, gastroculture has done infernally sticky infused with the smell of the frayed and abandoned openings to my markedly little to improve the eating and lady-moths. Wild with lust, male moths flock unwritten books, the general sense that cooking habits of most. A balsamic reduc- to these traps and expire. The traps are soon something persistent, slow, and extremely tion seems unlikely to help. Nor, regretta- smattered with a membrane of pale brown— patient is catching up with me and that no bly, will it set the taste buds singing. half a dozen moths per square inch. They amount of splatting its minions with rolled- Hephzibah Anderson is the author of look like tiny Damien Hirst installations. up copies of The Oldie will put it off. “Chastened” (Chatto & Windus) Sometimes the draught from an opening Still, you have to fight. So we called the prospect september 2012 LIFE 73 exterminators. This, pals, is what it involves. ing way to months of rain, with tempera- There are many decisions to be made You have to wash every rag of clothing you tures more reminiscent of autumn. And while the wine rests in barrel. Should the own, and stuff all of it into airtight plastic yet, as wine makers know, it is the month lees be stirred to give the wine more fla- bags. You have to empty your cupboards and of September that can rescue an ailing vin- vour? This technique, known as bâtonnage, wardrobes. You have to pile everything that’s tage. Drying winds and late summer sun- is common in Chardonnay wines. But too under your beds onto your beds, and get eve- shine can nurse unpromising fruit into much lees stirring can result in obtrusive rything that’s on the floor off the floor, to give drinkable wines. The season might yet be popcorn flavours. How much oxygen should the exterminator clear access to the carpets. kind. But before that verdict is in, many the wine be exposed to in the barrel? Oxy- And then, at 8am, up he turns, the moth decisions in the vineyard will have shaped gen is eaten up by the dying yeasts in the genocidaire. You have to leave the house and the eventual outcome of what nature has vat, and if it is not replenished complex aro- stay gone for at least five hours (which is how given to the producers. mas will form. Starving a wine of oxygen, long it takes the moth spray to cease to be known as reductive wine making, results in toxic to people). A fortnight ago we spent “Wine makers have firm the flinty aromas so coveted in Burgundy. all day circulating North London like refu- Go too far and the wines will smell sulphur- gees—car filled with wife, children and cat, views on why their ous, while erring on the other side leads to the cat making us particularly unattractive decisions are right and an orange colour and sherry-like character- candidates for asylum. istics. Finding the balance, or the best redox Then you need to leave your clothes in their neighbours’ are potential, as it’s known, is a precarious busi- bin bags for the next two weeks, and not vac- not. It takes great ness. Wine makers operate on a knife-edge. uum or mop the floor or clean the house in Beyond barrel-ageing there are other any way. Then the genocidaire comes back to confidence to make choices to be made. Does fining or filtering respray the place to wipe out the moths that these judgement calls” clarify the wine and improve it, or take out will have hatched since the last spray. Then many of the good things you wish to pre- you have to wait another two weeks with a The very best wine makers like to say serve? Wine makers know their own minds filthy house and all your clothes in binliners. that wine is natural, and that they do as on all these matters and have firm views Then it’s done. little as possible to intervene in the proc- on why their decisions are right and their As I write these words, I am waiting for ess of wine making. But wines do not neighbours’ are not. It takes great confi- the second wave of extermination to begin. make themselves. The wine you taste dence to make these judgement calls. Get The doorbell will ring, the moth-man will is the result of numerous fine judge- it right and you will have a winning wine; come, and I will vacate the house. After- ments that have a profound influence on get it wrong and a year’s worth of work will wards I’ll return, tentatively, to repossess my the way the wine turns out. How many be marred. And it’s no good correcting this home. In two weeks time, ever so cautious, healthy grape bunches have been sacri- year’s mistakes next year. Next year is dif- we’ll start in on the mountain of binbags, the ficed to keep the yields low and drive up ferent and will present another set of chal- sad heaps of clothes. the quality, concentrating all the nutri- lenges. What skillful wine makers have to Will we have peace of mind? I doubt it. tion in the remaining grapes? And what do is learn enough each year to respond to Every day, somewhere in the back of my of canopy management? Have the vines what nature offers them in the next, while mind, I’ll be waiting for the first sighting: been allowed to grow high, or have they still adding something of their distinctive out of the corner of my eye, somewhere up had their tops cropped to allow the sun to house style to the wines. round the curtain rail, a single moth, a tiny ripen the grapes? So the next time you taste and assess a dun fluttering. Many years ago, when walking around wine, take a moment to reflect on all the But then: if you start thinking like that, the hill of Corton in the Côte d’Or, I saw evi- thought and skill that went into the liquid the moths will have won. dence of three very different ideas of how in your glass. Celebrate the wine, and the Sam Leith is author of “You Talkin’ To Me? best to cultivate the vines. The first few rows wine maker, for wines of grace and beauty Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama” (Profile) had their tops levelled flat to allow the sun to are real achievements. penetrate. The next few rows grew high and Barry Smith is director of the Institute of unimpeded. And the third parcel of vines Philosophy, and editor of “Questions of Taste: were dusted with Bordeaux mix to guard The Philosophy of Wine” against mildew. I told my Burgundian host I would like to try the wines from the three different producers to see how they compared. “You still couldn’t tell,” he told me, Wine “since each vigneron [wine maker] may vin- Barry Smith ify the wines differently.” I then realised just how many factors could affect the resulting The art of wine making expression of Chardonnay in a finely honed Corton-Charlemagne. Vines from the same September is harvest time in the north- place with the same grape turn into charac- ern hemisphere. It’s the busiest period in teristically different whiteB urgundies. a wine maker’s calendar. And the most The choices are myriad. How long critical. Soon a year’s worth of work in the should the malolactic fermentation last? vineyard, and some crucial decisions in the How long should the wine spend in barrel? winery, will determine the whole season’s Which type of oak should be used? Oak fortune, and, depending on the vintage, from the Allier forest, or the Vosges, or the reward for many seasons to come. Slovenian oak? Perhaps a mixture of each? The weather has not been kind this year. The oak will also be roasted. But should it The summer’s heat arrived in early spring, be a light to medium roast, or a high roast “I’m getting hints of Fee... a dash of Fi... advancing flowering, but it soon fled, giv- that can lend wines a coconut aroma? notes of Fo... aroma of Fum...” 74 prospect september 2012 Arts & books Fairy tales forever? 74 The bronze age 77 ENO triumphant 78 Month in books 79

Neverending stories Do fairy tales still have appeal? The world’s stubborn refusal to grant our wishes lies behind the sudden revival of old stories, says Adam Kirsch

The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and that this kind of authentic, meaningful, face- such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapun- Social History of a Genre to-face storytelling is a thing of the past. zel, which all have analogues in cultures By Jack Zipes (Princeton, £19.95) At the same time that storytelling seems throughout the world—are perfect exam- Grimm Tales: For Young and Old an obsolete handicraft, classic stories—the ples of “memetic” engineering. Drawing By Philip Pullman (Penguin Classics, £20) bloody, surreal folk inventions we know as on the notion of the meme coined by Rich- fairy tales—seem to be having a revival. It’s ard Dawkins, Zipes imagines the elements of Long Ago and Far Away: Eight Traditional even possible that in a time of economic fairy tales competing for mental space over Fairy Tales uncertainty, readers are drawn to the oldest, generations of cultural evolution, until only Introduction by Marina Warner (Hesperus most familiar stories. What else explains the the fittest tales survived. And what makes a Press, £10) simultaneous appearance of Grimm Tales: tale “fit” is that it has the power “to deter- It has been more than 70 years since Wal- For Young and Old, in which Philip Pullman mine and influence social practices,” to ter Benjamin, in his classic essay “The Sto- has translated 50 of his favourite stories from shape the way human beings live together. ryteller,” declared that telling stories was the classic German storytellers; a slimmer For Zipes, the influence of the fairy tale obsolete. “Less and less frequently do we selection of tales, Long Ago and Far Away, is liberating, subversive, and especially femi- encounter people with the ability to tell a that draws from French and Italian sources; nist. If “fairy tales came to be contested and tale properly,” Benjamin complained. “It and the new study The Irresistible Fairy Tale, marked as pagan, irrelevant, and unreal,” is as if something that seemed inalienable by Jack Zipes, the dean of academic fairy-tale he writes, it is because they gave voice to to us, the securest among our possessions, studies? And that’s just the books: the last few the powerless—children, women, the poor. were taken from us: the ability to exchange months have seen two movie versions of the Indeed, Zipes shows in The Irresistible Fairy experiences.” For most of us in the western Snow White story, Mirror, Mirror, starring Tale that many women writers contributed world, our first experience of our culture’s Julia Roberts, and the darker Snow White and to making the fairy tale a standard genre classic stories—Snow White, Cinderella, the Huntsman, starring Kristen Stewart. View- of modern literature: the very term “fairy Little Red Riding Hood—does not come ers of American TV can tune in to Grimm, tale” comes from the contes de fées of Mad- through a wise man or woman sitting before a show about a police detective with magic ame d’Aulnoy, published in 1697 and soon an audience, spellbinding us with words. It powers who is called upon to fight supernatu- translated into English. The name stuck is in print or through images that we learn ral monsters; and Once Upon a Time, in which even though most of the stories we think of our culture’s foundational stories. ordinary human beings are revealed to be the as fairy tales do not contain any actual fair- This development has led to a certain nos- avatars of fairy-tale characters like Prince ies: “the term’s usage was a declaration of dif- talgia about the mere act of telling a story. Charming and Rumpelstiltskin. ference and resistance,” Zipes insists. Several In his novel The Storyteller, Mario Vargas Consider it all proof of what Jack Zipes of his chapters deal with the contribution of Llosa writes lovingly about the raconteurs calls the irresistibility of the fairy tale. “Think women writers and artists to the renewal of of the Machiguenga people, a remote Ama- of a gigantic whale soaring through the the fairy-tale form, including the French film zonian tribe that has had almost no contact ocean, swallowing each and every fish of any director Catherine Breillat, whose filmBlue - with modern Peruvian civilisation. By recit- size that comes across its path,” Zipes writes. beard Zipes discusses at length. ing their people’s cosmogonies and myths, The fairy tale evolved from unknown origins In seeing the fairy tale as a mode of by bringing news from one far-flung group into a gigantic cultural juggernaut, and sur- subaltern literature, a site of resistance to to another, the storyteller “remind[ed] each vives by digesting every new medium, from elite male power and logic, however, Zipes member of the tribe that the others were print to films to the internet. Like Vargas is not exactly swimming against the tide alive, that despite the great distances that Llosa, Zipes traces the origin of storytelling himself. Predictably, he rails against the separated them, they still formed a commu- back to a primal past: “the fairy tale was first Disneyfication of fairy tales, lamenting nity, shared a tradition and beliefs.” Some- a simple, imaginative oral tale containing that so many of us now experience Snow thing of this kind of reverence has always magical and miraculous elements and was White and Cinderella for the first time as attached to storytellers—just look at the way related to the belief systems, values, rites, bowdlerised cartoons. Tangled, the recent the Greeks made a legend of blind Homer— and experiences of pagan peoples.” Disney retelling of the Rapunzel story, he but there is a peculiarly modern nostalgia in The reason they survive to this day, Zipes describes as “banal,” “inane,” and worse: Vargas Llosa’s feeling, predicated on the fear suggests, is because the classic fairy tales— “the Disney witches are stereotypical S lenceafter losing their jobsminers, as and u of out theseven dwarfs arerevolutionary bandits uprising against popular an exploitative Queen. a In this film, leading figure, vara is less a damsel in distress than a man church’s demonisation of women.” the to back women date that of mass-mediated and manipulation gaze maleof Westernthe images the of products Little Red Riding Hood (Illustration by Margaret W. Tarrant): classic fairy tales give voice to the powerless, says the academic Jack Zipes cal agency. politi even and personal them granting and seriously heroines female their ing sions of fairy tales pride themselves on tak prospect september 2012 september prospect now White leads a cavalry charge wearing e mn o te e ms-ei ver mass-media new the of manyYet , in which Kristen E i Hbbw, h tr t vio to turn Hobsbawm, who ric T ake Snow White and the Hunts S tewart’s S now White C C he Gue hristian ------uto to duction abusefor ideological purposes. In the intro historyof the fairy tale is one of its use and tendentious;maybe then,butthemodern storiesbecause they were German patriots. weremotivated tocollect andpublish their remindsus that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm more sympathetic figure. S gain power in a society ruled by violentpathological, theonlyisway men. woman a can cern for preserving youth and beauty, con her that while us shows contrary, film the productofthe Western male gaze”: onthe by a suit of armour. eldom has the villain of a fairy tale been a T C hisway of telling the harlize rm Tales Grimm T heron,“stereotypicalnotais arts & books & arts E ven the evil queen, played , S nowWhite story P hilip P ullman - - light of Freudian and Jungian psychology otherbeingtouses,interpretedput thein century,20th contrast, by were tales fairy ern urbanisation and alienation. couldcultivatedbe antidoteanas modto antry was a survival from a time,purerthe culture past, and languagewhich of the peas Wordsworth in windowonto the spirit ofthe people. Asfor dictionary of the German language. that later led them to produce cultural nationalism same the inspiredthe by first major was Napoleon, and resistance toGerman T Hausmärchen T ales”—appeared height the of at 1812, in he first first edition hetheir bookof Inthis view, the German fairy tale was a —“ C E ide’ ad Householdhildren’s and gad rud h same thengland around Kinder-und B y the mid- 75 - -

© Lebrecht Authors 76 arts & books prospect september 2012 s t udi o s u n iv e rs al © Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman: seldom has the villain of a fairy tale been portrayed so sympathetically as repositories of sexual anxiety and fantasy. and ask it to grant a wish. First she wishes cartoon was such a natural one: cartoons Today, perhaps, what draws academics that her shack could be a cottage, then a are the medium of spectacle, able to show and writers like Vargas Llosa to the fairy mansion, then a palace, then a cathedral. us things that could never happen in the real tale is a certain piety about the act of sto- Finally, the wife demands to be turned into world. And with the increasing sophistica- rytelling itself. Pullman, whose children’s God: “I want to cause the sun and the moon tion of computer generated imagery, live- fiction is noted for being anti-religious, to rise. I can’t bear it when I see them rising action films can take over this cartoonish engages in a kind of sentimental animism and I haven’t had anything to do with it. But plasticity. In Snow White and the Huntsman, when it comes to telling stories: “I believe if I were God, I could make it all happen.” the “mirror, mirror on the wall” is a molten that every story is attended by its own This proves to be a wish too far, and the fish pool of metal that assumes the shape of a sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell turns their cathedral back into a shack—or, man, while soldiers shatter into pieces of the tale, and that we tell it more success- as Pullman literally translates it, “a pisspot.” glass and a wounded deer turns into a flock fully if we approach the sprite with a cer- More often, the fantasy of advancement of butterflies. This kind of movie magic is tain degree of respect and courtesy.” What works through marriage—as in Cinderella, not a banalisation of the fairy tale, but its happens, though, when we approach these where the abused servant wins the hand of natural consummation, speaking to exactly tales in their original state—as we find them the prince—or through the discovery of a the same popular appetite for spectacle that in Grimm Tales, or Long Ago and Far Away? mistaken identity—the servant turns out to the storyteller once fed through words. What if the effect of reading these stories be a prince in hiding. But on a more funda- Still, Aristotle was not wrong that specta- in bulk is actually to highlight their fundamental level, the object of desire in fairy tales cle is finally, for readers used to something mental poverty as narratives? is not just high rank, or sudden wealth, or more, the least interesting element of litera- In fact, fairy tales have a double relation- endless food—as in Jack and the Beanstalk, ture. If fairy tales are “marked” as literature ship to poverty. They are poor themselves—in which conjures a Cockaigne where “the for children, it is not, despite Zipes, because motivation, imagery, description, ambiguity, trout, salmon, carp, and other inhabitants of the patriarchy is trying to minimise their complexity, everything that makes for liter- the stream leaped upon the banks.” subversive power; it is because only children ary interest—and they are the products of Rather, what fairy tales obsessively con- can be truly affected by stories of magic. poverty. This is clear enough from their social jure up is a world of mutability, in which The proof of this lies in the way that fairy- and economic premises: they are frequently things and people are not immured in their tale movies, even those designed for chil- tales of hunger and neglect and child abuse. nature. The frog becomes a prince, the wolf dren, inevitably minimise the eventfulness What we remember about Hansel and Gre- becomes a grandmother, the little mer- and randomness of the tale in order to make tel is the gingerbread house and the witch in maid becomes a woman, the beast becomes it more logically and psychologically truth- the oven, but it starts out as a portrait of star- a handsome man, the 12 brothers become ful: Snow White becomes a fable about van- vation and infanticide: “If we don’t get rid of a flock of ravens. So much of the appeal of ity, Cinderella a fable about humility. In the them, all four of us will starve,” the children’s these stories, in a preliterate, premodern cul- Harry Potter stories, the formula of the fairy mother says to their father. “You may as well ture, must have been simply in their demon- tale is inverted: magic becomes an accessory start planing the wood for our coffins.” stration of the power of words to defy the laws to what is essentially a parable about grow- The obvious object of desire, in such dire of nature. In this way, the storyteller enacts ing up, which may be why the Potter books circumstances, is fabulous wealth, of the the magic powers he describes and possesses appeal to older readers as well. kind symbolised by and associated with roy- the wealth he fantasises about. To read fairy tales in their original forms, alty. That is why there is no intermediate In Aristotle’s Poetics, however, we are told on the other hand, is to realise that what they class, in fairy tales, between paupers and that spectacle is the least important ele- are really about is the primitive wish-fulfill- kings: this is a world in which actual, gradual ment of a drama, and that the most impor- ment that storytelling makes possible. Liter- advancement is unthinkable, so that one can tant is plot. Fairy tales, it is plain, reverse ature is born when this kind of storytelling only move in imagination from the bottom of the order of importance, offering a constant begins to acknowledge that the world never society to the top. The Grimms’ “The Fisher- parade of spectacles with the most rudimen- does grant our wishes, and that the stubborn- man and His Wife” offers a wry commentary tary and illogical of plots. When we ask why ness of things is ultimately more satisfying to on the insatiability of this kind of ambition. something happens in a fairy tale, the real hear about than their mutability. When the fisherman hooks a magic flounder answer is usually just “because I said so.” Adam Kirsch’s latest book “Why Trilling and lets it go, his wife demands that he return That is why the marriage of fairy tale and Matters” is published by Yale University Press prospect september 2012 arts & books 77 Hollow ring of bronze Bronze is back, but sheer weight is mistaken for artistic significance, saysLaura Gascoigne

In June, clusters of gilded bronze leaves postmodern artists like to avoid the taint Hirst in a sculptural lineage that goes back by Rachel Whiteread unfurled on the of traditionalism by concealing the medi- to Phidias, the ancient Greek master. Forget facade of the Whitechapel Gallery; now, um’s lustre under a coat of paint. To look Arte Povera—in a nervous market the per- as autumn approaches, a gilded bronze at them, you’d never guess that under the sistence of a “bronze standard” gives a sem- cast of a tree will be spreading its branches plasticky surfaces of Hirst’s giant anatomi- blance of stability and permanence to the through the building’s interior. The idea cal toys, the Chapmans’ sex dolls or Koons’s art of the banal and ephemeral. Bronze car- behind this year’s site-specific Bloomberg inflatable Hulks lurks the gleam ofR odin’s ries weight. Compare the £1m paid in 2000 Commission (from 5th September) by the The Age of Bronze. by Saatchi for Hirst’s giant anatomical toy Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, is to high- Hymn, made of painted bronze, with the light “hidden nature in the city” by bring- “The persistence of a recent Christie’s auction price of £46,850 ing the outdoors in. for Sarah Lucas’s sculpture Tit Teddy Make An artist who explores man’s relation- ‘bronze standard’ gives a Love, made of tights, kapok and a wooden ship with nature, Penone began his career semblance of stability to school chair. The price difference reflects as part of the “Arte Povera” movement, the art of the banal” more than the decline in the market and the using only poor man’s natural materials, difference in scale. but in the late 1980s he started casting trees Bronze casting is an expensive process, Almost alone among her Young British in bronze for public spaces. Now bronze so why waste money on something we can’t Artist generation, Sarah Lucas has resisted vegetation seems to be sprouting every- see? Because it repays the investment sev- the lure of bronze. She even has reservations where. There were two bronze trees in the eral times over. Contemporary collectors about using brass. “You might make a 2003 Turner Prize—the Chapman brothers’ who would never buy an art object made concrete sculpture,” she told the Guardian Goya-inspired gibbet tree hung with rotting of plastic will buy one that looks like plas- last year, “but it might be better than that carcasses (sculpted) and an apple tree by tic but is made of bronze. Tap it and see! It brass one even if the brass one is worth Anya Gallaccio hung with rotting apples has the ring of metal, and with it the ring of more… that’s not where the value is.” Her (real). Since then we’ve seen bronze casts artistic authenticity. Billionaires who pay throwaway materials—nylon tights, fags— of pine cones by Sarah Darby, Espaliered millions for bronze replicas of plastic prob- are defiantly non-collectable, stubbornly Girl by Laura Ford, more bronze twigs and ably also believe that the ancient alchemy of refusing objectification as passive art objects. chestnuts by Gallaccio and a bronze and the bronze casting process places Koons and If Penone’s art is povera—or was before he acrylic tree by Stephanie Carlton Smith in took to gilding the lily—Lucas’s is skint. last year’s summer exhibition at Her work is about the thrill of recognition, the Royal Academy. If this sig- not the thrill of ownership. For years her nals a revival of the old-fash- non-commercialism infuriated her ioned idea of communing with friend and patron Hirst, but she nature, it’s a surprisingly labo- stuck to her guns and rious way for contemporary her concrete sculptures artists to be going about it. of marrows. And now, There are easier ways of bring- while Hirst’s Tate ing the outdoors in, as we do at Modern retrospective has Christmas. underwhelmed the critical You won’t find any casts of establishment, Lucas is vegetation in the Royal Acad- enjoying the professional emy’s autumn exhibition accolade of a survey show, “Bronze” (from 15th Septem- “Ordinary Things,” at ber), although it does include the Henry Moore Institute an Etruscan branched lamp- (until 21st October), where stand in the form of a tree. The her intrinsically valueless works RA’s 5000-year history of this are being positioned “within an art venerable medium in 150 objects historical lineage that addresses the only allows for a thin sprinkling of materials and processes of sculpture.” modern and contemporary exam- Lucas’s idea of tree sculptures, inci- ples—there’ll be a Louise Bour- dentally, are logs of wood with jutting geois spider, a Jeff Koons basketball stumps shaped into plaster penises called and Jasper Johns’s ale cans. This is “Tree Nobs”—funny, bawdy, poignant and not for want of material to choose wonderfully economical. The concept of from. The sculpting medium con- truth to materials may be outdated, but signed to the scrapheap in the there’s still an artistic virtue in simplic- 1960s is back in fashion. We’re liv- ity. Laboriously mimicking reality, natu- ing through a new age of bronze, ral or manufactured, in ponderous bronze

P enone Archivi o © though we might not know it, as adds nothing to our understanding of it. It belongs in the realm of artifice rather Giuseppe Penone’s gilded bronze than art. cast of a tree at the Whitechapel Laura Gascoigne is a critic and writer 78 arts & books prospect september 2012 Charming and challenging London’s “second” opera house is a source of refreshing innovation, says Alexandra Coghlan

“Why does London need two opera younger opera-goers. cation, they now find themselves allied to houses?” It’s a question that has haunted Writing in the Musical Times in 1993, inventive interpretation. Le Grand Maca- British cultural life with deathless persist- Tom Sutcliffe addressed a prejudice that bre, staged by Barcelona’s directorial collec- ence since 1912. During English National still lingers today, arguing that “ENO is tive La Fura dels Baus in 2009, had singers Opera’s hundred year history the company not second best to Covent Garden. It is dif- entering and exiting through the assorted has been threatened with closure no fewer ferent, more theatrical, less vocal.” This orifices of a gigantic female nude and the than seven times. It has endured sustained mandate of music-as-drama has remained libretto included phrases like “Flatulent attack from the Arts Council, major inter- constant since ENO’s socially motivated fist-fucker.” nal strife, and in 2004 its debt was esti- origins back in 1889, when it offered afford- The same principle of creative freshness mated at £4m. Yet less than a decade after able, accessible operatic excerpts for those sees ENO now operating more like a the- ENO was rescued from receivership, the too poor or too alienated to visit the Royal atre company, generating fewer perform- company is financially healthier and artis- Opera House. ances but a much higher proportion of tically more urgent than ever. How? But during the 1980s this laudable desire new works and new productions. It’s a sac- On the eve of a 2012/13 season that for integrated, vernacular music-drama rifice, particularly when you considerB er- will stage no fewer than nine new produc- became distorted under the “Powerhouse” lin’s three opera houses (for a population tions and two UK premieres, the answer leadership of Peter Jonas, Mark Elder and less than half the size of London) which lies with two men: ENO’s artistic director David Pountney. Staging conceptually between them generate over 500 perform- John Berry and its music director Edward extreme and provocative productions, they ances per season, but far better to cut the Gardner. Despite funding cuts, they have drove the company into debt, achieving crit- number of performances than the number resisted the urge to retreat into the safety ical notoriety and public neglect. of productions. Fewer performances means of 19th-century opera’s capacious bosom, to A crucial part of the revival in the com- fewer seats to sell, supporting creative risk- stage endless classic revivals of La Traviata, pany’s fortunes has been Berry and Gard- taking rather than constraining it by the Carmen and La Bohème that would all but ner’s decision to reinterpret rather than need to sell-out the house 20 times over. guarantee audiences. Instead, under their reject these bold gestures. A policy of Another change to ENO’s practice leadership, we’ve seen a shift towards more employing first-time opera directors from has seen not only more frequent off- marginal repertoires—to baroque opera, the worlds of stage and film has brought site excursions to smaller London ven- neglected 20th-century classics, and espe- with it disaster (Mike Figgis’s Lucrezia Bor- ues (generating intimate gems such as cially works by living composers. gia) and confusion (Rufus Norris’s Don Benedict Andrews’s The Return of Ulysses “Contemporary opera is now at the core Giovanni), but eventually triumph. No one at the Young Vic) but also co-produc- of what we do,” Berry recently claimed. who saw Terry Gilliam’s beguiling phantas- tions with other international houses. Far It’s a trend that seems welcome to current magoria of a Damnation of Faust can deny from diluting the company’s identity (as audiences, and increasingly among that the exhilaration generated by new crea- Andrew Clark of the Financial Times has most mythical of cultural demographics: tive eyes, or that it was the pearl worth any claimed) or rendering it obsolete (“I’m amount of directorial grit. still not exactly sure what purpose it Because there has been grit, make serves,” observed Peter Conrad in the no mistake. Confrontation remains Guardian in 2009), this trend a key element of the ENO’s artis- constantly reinvigorates tic credo, but where previously ENO’s viewpoint, challenging concepts began forcibly extend- and ended with provo- k enton t ris r am © Terry Gilliam’s “beguiling phantasmagoria” of a Damnation of Faust in 2011 was representative of English National Opera’s bold approach prospect september 2012 arts & books 79 ing it beyond the navel-gazing “National” and chief executive Loretta Tomasi under- mate both he and we will be demanding a agenda its name implies. An opera com- stand that at the root of London’s need for ballsy, contemporary opera company that pany whose reach extends beyond our bor- two opera houses is the question not only of can challenge and charm its audiences ders, ENO is less and less the product of accessibility but also invention. while still balancing the books—something solely British creatives. The appointment of former television Ed Gardner and John Berry are well on the But while visual styles and multime- producer Peter Bazalgette as ENO’s chair- way to achieving. dia advances are keeping ENO current, man in May 2012 sent a clear message from Does London need two opera compa- its insistence on vernacular performances the institution to its audiences. Bazalgette nies? Perhaps it’s time for the Royal Opera has remained unchanged. Despite regular understands both art and entertainment, to start asking itself that question. attacks from purists (more vigorous since and his cultural passions are grounded by Alexandra Coghlan is the New Statesman’s the introduction of surtitles in 2005), Berry financial savvy. In a gloomy economic cli- classical music critic The month in books From hate to guarded hope, Jane Shilling picks the highlights

There’s a beginning-of-term feeling about When it comes to reinvented nating the measured prose with bursts of September’s books. After the summer’s masculinity, Michael Chabon intense feeling. featherweight holiday reads, it is back to is ahead of the game. Two Achebe observes that “the Nigeria-Bia- serious study of the human condition in all years ago the Pulitzer-prize- fra War was arguably the first fully tele- its infinite variety, beginning with Howard winning novelist published vised conflict in history…T he sheer amount Jacobson’s choleric comedy about love, long- Manhood for Amateurs, a col- of media attention led to an outpouring of ing and literature. lection of essays on the joys international public outrage.” He is par- and trials of being a chap. ticularly interesting when discussing the I once saw a reader reduce He returns to fiction with Telegraph Ave- response of writers and intellectuals, both Jacobson to silence (a con- nue (Fourth Estate, £18.99). Set in California Nigerian and foreign, to the war, and notes siderable feat) at a summer in 2004, the narrative follows the entwined with amusement the decision of the late literary festival. A character stories of two families, one black, one white. Auberon Waugh in 1968 to name his new- in his most recent novel, she Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe run a vintage born child Nathaniel Thomas Biafra Waugh. complained, was dislike- record store, while their wives, Gwen and able. Patiently, Jacobson Aviva, work as independent midwives. But Violence used to be written explained that his charac- their mellow existence is dramatically dis- into the grammar of polit- ter was a construct. It was necessary for rupted by lawsuits, racial tension, big busi- ical protest. Riots were its him to be flawed—indeed the novel hinged ness and family secrets. Chabon’s novel is verbs, explosions its full on his failings. In vain. His reader contin- everything that Jacobson’s is not: expansive, stops. But William J Dob- ued to insist that the book had been ruined inclusive and sweet natured to the point of son’s study of tyranny and for her because she couldn’t identify with sentimentality. protest explores an entirely its hero. different syntax of control It is not hard to imagine that this reader, The Nigerian novelist, poet and subversion. In The Dictator’s Learn- or someone like her, inspired the bravura and intellectual, Chinua ing Curve (Harvill Secker, £18.99) he opening of Jacobson’s latest fiction, Zoo Achebe, has lived through notes that the global ubiquity of mobile Time (Bloomsbury, £18.99). His hero, almost a century of turbu- phones and social media mean that “the novelist Guy Ableman, travels to Chip- lence in the country of his world’s dictators can surrender any hope ping Norton to address a reading group, birth. His memoir, There of keeping their worst deeds secret… The where he receives a hostile reception from Was a Country (Allen costs of tyranny have never been so high.” the members. “Why do you hate women so Lane, £20), combines per- His exhaustive research took him to China, much?” asks one of his readers. Another sonal reminiscence with a magisterial Russia, South America, Africa and the announces that, “The only character I iden- account of Nigeria’s post-independence Middle East, where he gleaned first-hand tified with in your book was the one who political upheaval. accounts of the courage and wit of dissi- died… because I’d been wishing I was dead Achebe was born in southeastern dents fighting for political change by non- from the first word.” Were“ dead,” says Guy Nigeria, the traditional Igbo homeland violent methods. (like his creator, a fastidious grammarian), whose attempt to secede as an independ- A political journalist based in Washing- and flees. ent republic, following a coup, counter- ton, he writes with exemplary clarity and a It is not just readers who may wince coup and massacres of Igbo civilians in sharp eye for colour. He is particularly good on reading Jacobson’s novel. Publishers, 1966, led to the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967- on the animals he finds wandering about on agents, critics—in fact anyone involved 69. The conflict put Achebe and his family the margins of his stories. in the production of books—are all ele- in extreme danger, particularly as he con- Timely, authoritative and as readable as gantly flayed in this angry, funny and pro- sented to act as an unofficial envoy for the a novel, this is one of the Autumn’s most res- foundly pessimistic fiction, which has one Biafran cause. onant books—not least because it ends on a of the bleakest comic endings since Evelyn At the time of the conflict he chose to note of guarded hope for the future. Waugh’s A Handful of Dust. Book groups express himself in poetry. Some of these Jane Shilling’s memoir, “The Stranger in the will hate it. poems are included in this memoir, illumi- Mirror,” is published by Vintage Books 80 prospect september 2012 Fiction Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm’s prize-winning books have having created “one of the great been translated into 20 languages. A characters of contemporary fiction.” Swiss-German writer born in 1963 and The writer Zadie Smith said it was “a living in Winterthur, Switzerland, he has novel to make you doubt your own also written plays, both for the stage and dogma. What more can a novel do than radio. His writing is restrained, but that?” populated with strong characters; a “We’re flying” is the title story from recent Guardian review of his latest collection of short fiction to be novel, Seven Years, credited him with published by Portobello books in 2013.

We’re flying

Six o’clock came and went, but Angelika wasn’t really worried. be there any minute. Dominic asked if any minute was now. No, She brought out the garage, but Dominic didn’t want to play any- said Angelika. When was any minute? Now? No, any minute was more. He sat quietly on her lap and leaned his head against her soon. Now? Not yet. She would tell him. She lifted him off the breast. The last couple of times the bell rang, he had gone running ground and carried him to the sofa. He took hold of her again. to the door, only to come back with shoulders drooping, because Is now soon? She didn’t reply. She was busy doing things, tidying it was some other child’s mother or father. All the parents knew away the last of the toys, opening the windows to let in some fresh Dominic, because he was usually already there in the morning air. At seven she called Benno and said she was running late. They when they dropped off their own children and still there when agreed to make it half past eight. Dominic sat rigidly on the red they picked them up at night. They said hello to him, and thanked sofa and didn’t take his eyes off her. him for opening the door. They asked him vaguely if he’d played Usually it was his mother who brought him to nursery school nicely that day. Then as soon as they saw their own children, they and his father who picked him up. He always came at the last beamed and forgot all about Dominic. moment, sometimes he was late, but this time he was more than Shall we look at a picture book together? Dominic merely an hour late. Angelika’s annoyance had lessened. Now she was shook his head. When Angelika stood up and set him down on beginning to worry. She felt uneasy, she felt threatened, she didn’t the ground, he held on to her leg. She said she was going to call his know how or why. I’m going to leave in five minutes, she thought to home. Let me go, she said. He wouldn’t let go. She was annoyed, herself, and in five minutes she thought the same thing.S he called not with him, but with his parents, and she felt bad about taking her boss but got no reply. She wondered about calling the police to out her irritation on him. She was tired and wanted to go home. ask if there’d been an accident somewhere, but then she decided Benno was coming at half past seven, and she wanted to shower not to. She wrote a note to Dominic’s parents to say she had taken first and relax a bit.S he looked at the clock. It was twenty past six. the boy home with her. She left her cell phone number at the bot- She broke Dominic’s grip and stepped away from him. He was tom. She shut the windows and bundled Dominic up in his jacket lying in the corner, screaming now, and she tried to call his par- and hat and shoes, and took him by the hand. When she’d locked ents. She dialled all the numbers she found in the book, home up, she realised she’d forgotten the note, and she had to go back in numbers, office numbers, and both mobile phones, but no one again to get it and attach it to the door. picked up. She left messages. She made no effort to conceal her She was often out and about in the city with the children, going irritation. After that was done she felt a little calmer. She went to the zoo or the lake or a playground near the day care. But this across to Dominic, leaned down over him, and patted him on the was different. She felt she was with her own child, and she felt shoulder. Someone would be along soon. oddly proud—as though taking a child by the hand were some- Dominic asked if it would be his mama or his papa who was how difficult. Dominic was quiet, who knew what was going on in coming. Angelika said she wasn’t sure, but one or the other would his head. He sat down next to her in the streetcar and looked out the window. After a couple of stops, he began asking questions. © Granta Books 2012. Peter Stamm’s novel “Seven Years” (Granta, £14.99) He pointed to a woman and asked, Why is that woman wearing is out now a hat? Because it’s cold. Why is it cold? It’s winter. Why? Look at prospect september 2012 Fiction 81

earnest and concentrated. Watch out, said Angelika, here comes the bus. I’m flying, said Dominic. Angelika lived in a suburb on the edge of town, in a five-storey tenement from the 1980s. At the time she moved into the city, she hadn’t been able in her hurry to find anything better, and after a while she had gotten used to it, she no longer heard the noise from the airport, and it was close to the forest where she liked to go jogging in summer. Lots of families with children lived here. Eventually Angelika would have children too. She had never dis- cussed it with Benno, and didn’t even know how he felt about it. But one thing was for sure: he wouldn’t want to live out here. He let her know that each time he came to visit her. Most of the time they met at his place. Only when Angelika was at work late did he sometimes agree to sleep over at hers. She was amazed by how naturally Dominic followed her up the stairs. On the second floor he even overtook her and charged on ahead. When she stopped in front of her door, he was half a flight up, and she had to call him back. Then suddenly he didn’t want to go down the stairs alone, and she had to lead him down. He stopped in the hall and waited patiently while she took off his wet shoes and his jacket. She asked him if he was hungry. He nodded, and she went in the kitchen to see what she had in the fridge. She cooked some pasta, with sauce out of a jar. While he ate, she flicked through the free newspaper she’d picked up on the streetcar. Dominic was ravenous, cramming the noodles into his mouth with both hands. When she asked him to use a fork, he said he didn’t know how. But you manage it at nursery, she said. He pretended to try. Then, when she told him off again, he started to wail. Don’t be so silly, said Angelika. Dominic pushed his plate away with a jerk and upset his glass. The water spilled over the table and the newspaper. Can’t you watch what you’re doing? snapped Angelika, and got up to get a paper towel. Suddenly her apartment looked ugly and inhospitable to her. No wonder Benno didn’t like coming here. She remembered her childhood and the home of her parents, that cosy old house. At the time she had the feeling nothing bad could happen to her in that house, as though it had always been there and would always be there, a refuge and a protection for her. When her parents said a few years ago that they wanted to sell it and move into an apartment, she couldn’t believe it. Her father had trouble walking, and her mother said neither of them was getting any younger, and the garden was a lot of work, and what were they both doing, rattling around all alone in that big old house. Angelika said nothing. Her parents hired movers to handle the move. She asked herself if she

m Marlow/Magnu Peter © would ever manage to offer a child such a home. It seemed to her she didn’t have the confidence, the security, or the love. the little dog, said Angelika. Why is the dog little? Just because, They were still at table when Angelika heard the key in the she said, there are big dogs and little dogs. Are we going home? door. Hello, Benno called from the hall. He appeared in the door asked Dominic. Yes, said Angelika, we’re going home. Home to of the living room, stopped, and said, Well, who do we have here? my home. Angelika explained. Is he going to sleep in our bed? Benno asked At the station they had to wait. The bus was late, so they stood with a grin. Because if he is, I can pack up and go home. Angelika in the dark and waited. It had been raining in the afternoon, and said she was sure it was just a misunderstanding. Misunderstand- the car headlights glistened on the wet asphalt. At least Angelika ing? said Benno. People leave their kid somewhere, and it’s a mis- had tomorrow off.S he wanted to go to IKEA with Benno and buy understanding? He sat down with them at table. Dominic stared a cabinet for her shoes. She had looked at the catalogue and knew at him, and Benno stared back, with the same look of astonish- exactly which model. ment. Perhaps they flew away, he said. Do you think your parents For a while Dominic didn’t say anything. When she bent down could have flown away? He flapped his arms like a bird. Dominic to look at him, he suddenly stood up on one foot and swivelled on said nothing, and Benno asked if there was anything left to eat. his own axis like a ballet dancer. He spread his arms, and turned I thought you would have eaten already. Not really, said Benno. around and around until he was wobbling. He kept his eyes fixed Angelika said she could make him some spaghetti. Do you want on the ground, completely lost in his funny dance. His face was some more? she asked Dominic. He nodded. 82 Fiction prospect september 2012

When she brought the spaghetti into the living room ten min- where he began tickling him. Dominic squirmed, but he didn’t utes later, Benno and Dominic were sitting on two sofa cushions laugh. He assumed the serious expression he had had during his on the floor. Dominic was sitting behindB enno and had his arms dance at the bus stop. Angelika sat up, straightened her bra, and around his waist. Benno leaned his upper body forward and to pulled on her blouse. She felt ashamed of herself. the side and back, and was making droning sounds. Dominic was Do you know where babies come from? Benno asked. Dominic laughing wildly and copying his movements. We’re flying, said said he had come out of his mama’s belly. But do you know how Benno. you got in there? asked Benno. I was so small, said Dominic, I was Angelika put the spaghetti on the table and fetched cutlery as small as this, and he pinched his finger and thumb together. and a clean plate. Come on, she said, supper’ll get cold. Again she Just before nine, Dominic’s mother called. Angelika jumped, thought of her childhood, where such a sentence must have fallen as she always did when her cell phone rang. The woman’s voice a thousand times, though she seemed only now to understand it. sounded half annoyed, half embarrassed. She apologized. Her Benno got up. He had his arms out and was still flying. He made husband had a late meeting that he hadn’t told her about. Ange- for the table. Dominic was holding onto his belt and allowed him- lika could hear his voice in the background, protesting. At any self to be towed. He was skipping up and down with delight. Sud- rate, we each thought the other was doing it. They were at the day denly Benno spun around and grabbed the boy and plopped him care, and were on their way here. Angelika gave them directions, on a chair. There, he said, we have to eat something, the plane’s with a lot of difficulty. Well, we’ll be there soon, said the mother. run out of fuel. Dominic’s fine, said Angelika. Yes, of course, said the mother with Angelika watched the two of them eating. Now it was Domin- a little laugh, I didn’t doubt it. I’ll see you in twenty minutes, half ic’s turn to copy Benno. He had his head low over his plate and an hour, maybe. shovelled forkfuls of spaghetti into his mouth, all the while She’s a lawyer, said Angelika. squinting at Benno. Angelika looked at her boyfriend, who Is she good-looking? asked Benno. Rich? seemed unaware of it. He’s like a kid himself, she thought. Maybe Angelika said she was sure Dominic’s parents weren’t short of that was why he was so good with them. She had had a couple of money. His father was a relationship counsellor. occasions to witness it, when he had picked her up from nursery What’s she look like? asked Benno. school. In some ways he struck her as almost being younger than Average, said Angelika. Dominic, who seemed to be aware of everything that was going Half an hour later the bell rang. Dominic had been sitting on on, and thought it through and asked questions. Benno didn’t ask the sofa in shoes and coat for the past ten minutes. Good-bye, little any questions. He came here, ate, slept with her, and went away fellow, said Benno. Come and see us again, will you? the next day. She couldn’t imagine him as a father. But then most Dominic didn’t answer. of the men who came to pick up their kids at day care weren’t Angelika took him by the hand. fathers either. They talked to the kids as if they were kids them- When Dominic saw his mother through the glass door, he broke selves, and fooled around, and when you asked them something away and ran down the last couple of steps. The two of them faced they shrugged their shoulders. each other, separated only by the glass. The mother had crouched Do I get a beer? Benno asked, and then he asked Dominic, Hey down and was signalling to the boy. He pressed his hands and face man, do you want a beer? No-o-o, said Dominic emphatically, beer against the cold glass, which misted over with his breath. Ange- is for grownups. lika unlocked the door. The mother stood up. Angelika saw she After supper, Dominic wanted to fly some more, butB enno said had a package in her hand. Is that for me? asked Dominic. That’s the plane had mechanical trouble. He sat on the sofa and switched for dear Angelika, said the mother. As thanks for letting you come on the TV. Angelika cleared the table. She brought Dominic a few and visit her. She handed the present to Angelika, and repeated toys she kept in the apartment for her nephews and nieces. Then that she was terribly sorry it had happened, and she was thor- she sat down next to Benno, who was watching a cop show. Sud- oughly embarrassed. A misunderstanding. Angelika had thought denly she felt very much alone. of some reply, but then all she said was these things happened, Dominic played uncertainly with Legos, and kept looking up and thank you for the present. I hope you’ll like this, she said, and at them on the sofa. Benno had put his feet up on the coffee table, then to Dominic, Right, let’s hurry home and get to bed. Say bye- and had his arm around Angelika. He undid the top button of her bye. Angelika watched them leave and walk over to a jeep that was blouse. Stop that, she said, but he carried on, and shoved his hand parked diagonally to the other cars. She could just make out the down her front. When she tried to get up, he held her down. I’m silhouette of the father at the wheel. The mother bent down to not going to let that runt spoil my fun, he said, and he took off her Dominic and seemed to tell him something. Angelika waved, but blouse. If he says anything, I’m out of a job, said Angelika. Benno they didn’t seem to notice. When the door closed behind her, she kissed her on the mouth and talked at the same time, she didn’t turned around once more. The car was gone. On the glass she saw know what he was saying. He must have seen things at his parents’, the traces left by Dominic’s hands.S he wiped them away with her he said, and anyhow he had to learn sometime. Angelika tried to sleeve. forget about Dominic, but she couldn’t. She remembered how he Benno was in the shower, Angelika could hear the water. She had cried on the stairs. He had looked at her as though it was her sat down in the living room and opened the package. It was a bot- fault his parents weren’t coming. I don’t like him, she thought, tle of perfume. She sniffed it and dabbed some behind her ears actually I don’t like any of them. She lay on the sofa and embraced and between her breasts. Benno emerged from the shower. He was Benno. He laughed and thrust his hand between her legs. When naked, with a towel slung around his hips. She saw the bulge of he tried to undo her belt, she pushed him away. He allowed him- his erection. He sat down beside her and embraced her. She freed self to fall to the floor, and lay there on his back, next to Dominic. herself and said she would have a quick shower too. She locked the Do you want to fly? he asked the boy, who was staring at him in bathroom but didn’t undress. When Benno knocked on the door, utter bewilderment. He grabbed him and lifted him onto his belly, she was still sitting on the toilet, with her face in her hands. ANTI-PORN The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Feminism Julia Long

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The generalist by Didymus Enigmas & puzzles How many miaows to the oink? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Ian Stewart 11 12 While Farmer Suticle was away at market, some of 13 14 the farm animals had fun on an old seesaw that was lying around in the barn. They found that various

15 16 combinations of animals balanced:

17 18

19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27

29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36 37

How many cats does it take to balance one pig? 38 39 [Assume all animals of a given species have the same weight, and all animals are the same distance from the pivot—despite appearances.] 40 41

Last month’s answer He can use 11 red tiles, but no more. Several arrangements give 11: 42 43 this is just one of them. If he could avoid putting a red tile in the middle row, he could fit 12 red tiles in. ACROSS instance (7) genus of this family (11) 1 BBC sitcom starring Judi 38 The Undertaker Bird, an 12 One of the Jutish brothers Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, African stork (7) who led the first Germanic or a song from Casablanca 39 Dark Blue freshman invaders to Britain (7) (2,4,4,2) sponsored by the Pierce 21 French soldier who 7 By halves in Le Havre (1,6) Institute (6,7) composed Chant de guerre 13 Piercing, according to 40 Nitre cast in cakes (3,8) pour l’armée du Rhin (6,2,5) Spenser (9) 41 North Ayrshire resort; a 22 Deep-fried Chinese savoury 14 Toxic oxidising agent known ferry terminus for Arran (9) pancakes filled with as Plumb dulcis in the 42 Range of hills in Scotland vegetables, pork and prawns Middle Ages (4,7) with Meikle Bin the highest (6,5) How to enter 15 Last drink before leaving point, at 1870 feet (7) 23 In optics, circular fringes (3,3,3,4) 43 Star of Dr Strangelove and as a convex lens touches a plane surface (7,5) The generalist prize 16 City in Hesse with the I’m Alright, Jack (5,7) One winner receives the 19th edition of oldest Protestant-founded 25 West Indian fast bowler who the Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable university in the world (7) DOWN the first Antiguan to play Test cricket (4,7) (hardcover, £35). The new edition contains 17 Small Indian ruminant, 1 Brian May’s discipline (12) Hyelaphus porcinus (3,4) 27 C11th to C13th religious facts and fables from Brewer collections of 2 French département, capital military campaigns (3,8) 18 Forlorn hope or shock troops Montauban (4-2-7) the past, as well as usual entries on curious 28 Restaurant’s food on offer customs and intriguing expressions; bird (7,6) 3 The Muse of tragedy (9) 19 A temporary respite (8) (4,2,4) life; vulgar beliefs & superstitions; the 4 Luxury, high-speed touring 30 Crime mystery (9) 20 Caddis flies (11) car (4,7) murky world of newspapers; and political 32 The black grouse (5-4) 24 A muskmelon (10) 5 Formerly, a little dish served alliances of yesteryear. 26 Composer of Bailero, one of between the main courses (8) 33 “Beautiful” island and Enigmas & puzzles prize headquarters of the Chinese the Songs from the Auvergne 6 A glass of brandy (4,2,4) Nationalists (7) The winner receives Games and Mathematics: Subtle (10) 8 Not so fast, musically (4,5) Connections, by David Wells (Cambridge University Press, 29 Anthus pratensis (6,5) 34 US car, named after Henry 9 In phonetics, pronounced Ford’s estate near Dearborn, £14.99), which explores the game-like features found in a 31 Most irritable (8) with the tip of the tongue Michigan (8) wide range of human behaviours. between the upper and lower 35 Former name of the Asian 36 Prolific Baroque composer state, capital Ulan Bator teeth (11) for the trumpet who also Rules (5,8) 10 Easily angered (7) developed the concerto 37 A Tutsi or a Hutu, for 11 The screw pine is the typical grosso (7) Send your solution to [email protected] or Crossword/Enigmas, Prospect, 2 Bloomsbury Place, London, WC1A 2QA. Include your email and postal address for prize administration. All entries must be received by 7th September. Last month’s solutions Winners will be announced in our October issue. Solutions across: 1 La Chartreuse de Parme 13 Huascaran 14 Fraserburgh 15 Cartouche 16 Into thin air 17 Namibia 18 Finnegans Wake 19 Emmer 21 Hairst 22 Traherne 26 Henri Beyle 27 Touch-me-not 29 Tzitzith 30 Sydney 31 Lehrs 34 Equestriennes 37 Anosmia 39 Spirometers 40 Orchidist 41 Globigerina Last month’s winners 42 Graylings 43 Raiders of the Lost Ark The generalist: Kathleen Fry, Peterborough Solutions down: 2 Anagram 3 Hector Berlioz 4 Rorschach test 5 Range of hills 6 Unfairness 7 Exanthem Enigmas & Puzzles: Tom Weston, London 8 Electra 9 Aiblins 10 Mariana Trench 11 Chaconne 12 Thar Desert 20 Monticulipora 23 Rocky Marciano 24 Hamilton Inlet 25 Hound’s-tongue 26 Hathersage 28 Gymnasiast 32 Shaktism 33 Jerepigo 35 Stonied 36 Roe deer 38 Meitner Download a PDF of this page at www.prospect-magazine.co.uk Prospect September 2012 10/8/12 10:35 Page 1

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THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT IS COMING TO AN END... Read all about it now - available in paperback and ebook 88 prospect september 2012 The way we were Great women, by women Extracts from memoirs and diaries, chosen by Ian Irvine

Fanny Burney hears of if she should be a great Mme de Staël’s cour- composer? This fantastic age during the Sep- idea is to her the merest tember Massacres in commonplace: it is the Paris from one of the fabric of her being. As French exiles in Lon- she conducts, she hears don (November 1792): music like Beethoven’s. “[M. de Jaucourt was] As she strides and turns thrown into the prison and wheels about to us of the Abbaye, where, perched mute on chairs had it not been for the she thinks this is about very extraordinary and the most important event admirable exertions of now taking place in Lon- Madame de Staël (M. don. And perhaps it is.” Necker’s daughter, and the Swedish ambassa- Barbara Castle, dor’s wife), he would Labour health sec- infallibly have been retary, on Margaret massacred. Thatcher, who was I must here tell standing for the lead- you that this lady, who ership of the Conserv- was at that time seven ative party (February months gone with child, 1975): was indefatigable in “The papers are full of her efforts to save every Ethel Smyth’s “March of the Women” became an anthem of the suffragette movement Margaret Thatcher. She one she knew from this has leant herself with dreadful massacre. She walked daily (for men and women. I neither love, esteem, nor grace and charm to every piece of photog- carriages were not allowed to pass in the admire this strange being; but (if I could bear rapher’s gimmickry, but don’t we all when streets) to the Hôtel de Ville, and was fre- the high mental stimulus so long), I would go the prize is big enough? What interests me is quently shut up for five hours together with every night for three months to watch and how blooming she looks—she has never been the horrible wretches that composed the study its manifestations.” prettier. I am interested because I under- Comité de Surveillance, by whom these mur- stand the phenomenon. She may have been ders were directed; and by her eloquence, Virginia Woolf goes to a rehearsal of up late on the Finance Bill Committee; she and the consideration demanded by her The Prison, an opera by Ethel Smyth is beset by enemies and has to watch every rank and her talents, she obtained the deliv- (February 1931): gesture and word. But she sails through it all erance of above twenty unfortunate prison- “On Monday I went to hear her rehearse. A looking her best. I understand why. She is in ers, some of whom she knew but slightly.” vast Portland Place house with the cold wed- love: in love with power, success—and with ding cake Adams plaster: shabby red carpets; herself. She looks as I looked when Harold Charlotte Brontë, watches the French flat surfaces washed with dull greens. The [Wilson] made me Minister of Transport. actress, Rachel, perform (June 1851): rehearsal was in a long room with a bow win- If we have to have Tories, good luck to her!” “I have seen Rachel—her acting was some- dow looking on, in fact in, to other houses— thing apart from any other acting it has iron staircases, chimneys, roofs—a barren Brigid Brophy writes about Martina come in my way to witness—her soul was in brick outlook. There was a roaring fire in Navratilova at Wimbledon, recorded later it—and a strange soul she has—I shall not the Adams grate... Ethel stood at the piano in her book Baroque ‘n’ Roll (July 1978): discuss it—it is my hope to see her again. She in the window, in her battered felt, in her jer- “Ms Navratilova has considerable power over and Thackeray are the two living things that sey and short skirt conducting with a pencil... a spectator’s heart, including that of draw- have a spell for me in this great London— She sang now and then, and once, taking the ing [it] into the mouth. Her semi-final with and one of these is sold to the Great Ladies— bass, made a cat squalling sound—but eve- Ms Goolagong afforded the purest pleasure and the other—I fear—to Beelzebub...” rything she does with such forthrightness, lyric tennis can give. Even her final, though “Thackeray and Rachel have been the two directness, that there is nothing ridiculous. seldom lovely tennis, was a much more intel- points of attraction for me in town: the one, She loses self-consciousness completely. She lectually and emotionally engaging contest being a human creature, great, interesting, seems all vitalised; all energised. She knocks than finals usually are. As a match player, and sometimes good and kind; the other, I her hat from side to side. Strides rhythmi- she has only two disabilities. She won’t make know not what, I think a demon. I saw her cally down the room to signify... that this is an ungainly stroke even when nothing else in Adrienne Lecouvreur and in [the part of] the Greek melody; strides back. Now the will do; and she’d sooner forfeit a point than Camilla [Camille in Corneille’s Horace]—in furniture moving begins, she said, referring play a banal, merely bread-and-butter shot. the last character I shall never forget her— to some supernatural gambols connected She and Ilie Nastase are players of the (to she will come to me in sleepless nights again with the prisoner’s escape, or defiance or my taste) most exciting kind, because they and yet again. Fiends can hate, scorn, rave, death. I suspect the music is too literary—too are always in danger of losing through sheer

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