By Angus Colwell
Good morning. Health agencies are saying that meningitis is now a ‘national incident’, after an infected person in London went into hospital. Scotland’s MSPs voted to reject assisted dying, while Donald Trump issued some more broadsides against Nato and the US bombed Iranian missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz. The Guardian’s investigation into Nigel Farage’s Cameo videos hasn’t really landed, while Volodymyr Zelensky wooed MPs in parliament last night. Amid all this, Pakistan bombed a drug rehab centre in Kabul and killed 400. The Federal Reserve will announce a rates decision today, and we’ve found a new subatomic particle. You’re reading Spectator Daily, here is everything you need to know today.
FEARS GROW OVER MENINGITIS OUTBREAK
Well, if there’s anything that could take a war off the front pages, it’s a disease outbreak. How worried should we be about meningitis? The Mail leads this morning with comments from health officials saying that it’s the worst meningitis outbreak they’ve ‘ever seen’ in Britain.
Things somewhat changed before 7 p.m. last night, when it was confirmed that an infected person had been admitted to a London hospital. The UK Health Security Agency said that it would be treating the outbreak as a ‘national incident’, a few hours after Wes Streeting said the spread was ‘unprecedented’. Cases have risen from 13 to 15, although more could follow, given the incubation period can be up to two weeks.
Students walk through the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus in face masks.
A nine-month-old girl, Nala-Rose Fletcher, is critically in hospital despite being vaccinated against the disease, and around 5,000 students living in halls at the University of Kent have been offered the jab. The UKHSA chief said ‘this is the most cases I’ve seen in a single weekend with this type of infection’.
Expect more scrutiny about how the UKHSA has been handling its role. The Telegraph reported, quite staggeringly, that it used social media to tell Club Chemistry in Canterbury about the cases, and did so via an unverified account. For now, however, its main job is trying to ascertain whether the current outbreak is being caused by a mutant, more infectious strain of meningitis B, given how cases have spread.
For a note of caution, there’s this piece from Robert Dingwall. The sociologist, who you may remember from the airwaves during Covid, points out that ‘around 10 per cent of us carry [meningitis] at any one time. The figure is perhaps 20 per cent for teenagers and young people’. Therefore, ‘responses should be appropriate’. Dingwall points out that it’s not a ‘random airborne hazard’: close contact, such as kissing and the sharing of vapes, continues to be blamed.
Before we move on to the rest, Scotland last night rejected the chance to make itself the first part of Britain to legalise assisted dying. The proposals, tabled by the Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur, were defeated by 69 to 57. Under the legislation, a terminally adult would have had to affirm their wishes twice, as well as passing checks from doctors to see if they had been coerced. McArthur said those who rejected the bill had provided a ‘woefully inadequate response to the suffering and trauma experienced by dying Scots and their families’.
‘Today’s objective is to establish an objective.’
THE PRESIDENT LASHES OUT
The United States does not need Nato – that’s the latest analysis of Donald Trump. The President expressed this view during a televised conversation with Micheal Martin, the visiting Irish Prime Minister, after finding that few to no countries were willing to join in with his operation to open the Strait of Hormuz by force.
Trump singled out Keir Starmer in particular, pointing to a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office and saying: ‘Unfortunately, Keir is not Winston Churchill’. He also attacked the BBC for its ‘corrupt and fraudulent’ coverage of the war (yesterday, its world affairs editor John Simpson described Iran’s decapitated security chief as seeming ‘reasonable’). You can watch the conversation here.
Overnight, the US military hit Iranian missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz with 5000lb bunker-busting bombs. US Central Command said the sites contained anti-ship cruise missiles that posed a risk to traffic in the strait. This morning, the chief of Iran’s army vowed ‘decisive’ retaliation for Israel’s killing of security chief Ali Larijani yesterday. There is a story just breaking of a ballistic missile strike on Tel Aviv that has killed at least two.
‘Can we please talk just a little about St Patrick’s Da–’ ‘No.’
Back in Westminster, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, has made an intervention on behalf of Starmer, saying that Trump’s repeated criticisms of the Prime Minister are ‘childish’. Angela Rayner, meanwhile, decided that it was a good time to say that Labour was ‘running out of time’ under Starmer. Best now to rally around the flag?
Even worse for Trump, his top counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigned yesterday over the intervention in Iran. Kent blamed Israel for the fighting, saying that Iran had not posed an imminent threat to the US. Laura Loomer has written a long rambling tweet calling Kent ‘consumed with Jew hate’. Read all that here.
It’s also heating up in the Caribbean, as the White House talks tough on Cuba. Trump said that Cuba is in ‘bad shape’ and promised that action would be coming ‘very soon’. Cuba is currently experiencing a blackout in part due to the Trump administration’s intervention in Venezuela, which had supplied half of Cuba’s oil. It would be quite the gamble to start another conflict in the region whilst his current effort appears to be faltering.
If that all wasn’t enough, the US is also telling Syria to ramp up its efforts against Hezbollah by sending forces into eastern Lebanon. The Syrian government is apparently opposed to getting involved with the ongoing conflagration in the Middle East, quite understandably – the same position our own government holds under Keir Starmer.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has done a big hit piece on Nigel Farage over his Cameo videos. Farage has recorded thousands of videos on the platform in the last five years: the basic premise is you can pay a celebrity to wish you happy birthday or read out a message of your own devising. Farage has, unawares it would seem, been prompted into reading out phrases which make reference to racist concepts or catchphrases. In one incident he told somebody back from prison for ‘far-right rioting’ that he should ‘keep acting the right way’. It’s not the cleanest hit, journalistically – but it does raise
questions about the other methods Farage uses to bolster his earnings. Advertising gold to pensioners, for example: is that really appropriate for a future prime minister?
On the topic of Farage, Lisa Nandy has promised to give the BBC its own independent charter – in effect freeing it from ‘political interference’ that a future populist government might impose upon it. Nandy isn’t pretending otherwise, saying she wants to protect the service from ‘culture war attacks’. Nandy apparently believes the BBC is one of the top two institutions alongside the NHS for Britain. Sorry Monarchy. Sorry Royal Navy, make way for Auntie Beeb.
Coming up today
The King and Queen will be hosting the Nigerian President at Windsor Castle, in the first Nigerian state visit in 37 years.
Run a mile from either of these: Zack Polanski will be addressing the New Economics Foundation at 10.30 this morning, while Simon McDonald is giving evidence to the Lords from 11.30 (will he resist another dig at Antonia Romeo?)
Air Force Farage continues on to Thurrock, where he will host another rally this evening, this time with daytime telly’s David Bull (the party’s chairman, remember him?)
FANCY SEEING YOU AGAIN
Remember Zelensky? The Ukrainian President tried to make sure MPs have not forgotten him last night, as he addressed them in parliament. He said that Russia and Iran were ‘brothers in hatred’, before displaying some Ukrainian drone-fighting tech, including the capability to track Russian drones with iPads. He also constructed an Iran Theory of Everything, saying there had not been ‘a single year of real peace’ since the 1979 Iranian revolution (hate to quibble, but has there been a year of ‘real peace’ ever?). Starmer told Zelensky that ‘the focus must remain on Ukraine’, and that Putin must not benefit from distraction or high oil prices.
‘Come on now Volodymyr, that’s quite enough, you’re making me look bad.’
It comes amid some tentative progress on the battlefield as a recent drone campaign has choked off Russian forces. Ukrainian drones are now operating deeper in Russian-held territory, striking targets up to 93 miles behind the Russian lines. This has meant that the ‘kill zone’, as it’s called, has multiplied threefold, making it very difficult for Russia to bring forward men and materiel to sustain offensive operations. Ukraine targeted Moscow itself with around 40 drones yesterday, the fourth consecutive day it has attacked the capital.
A staggeringly high number of people seem to have been killed in Afghanistan yesterday, following a Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul. The Taliban government said at least 400 people had been killed, while Pakistan denied hitting the hospital (Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press said that the facility was reduced to rubble, with people being rescued from it). Pakistan declared an ‘open war’ on Afghanistan in February, accusing it of hosting militant groups within its borders. China has taken a lead role on trying to calm things down, given its significant investments
in Pakistan.
And back in the US, it was Pam Bondi’s turn last night to be subpoenaed over the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Attorney General has been ordered to testify before lawmakers by the House, although she recently sparred with them at a House committee hearing. Bondi repeatedly refused to answer questions about her handling of the files, and ended up calling one Democrat a ‘washed-up loser lawyer’.
Watch and listen
On the latest episode of Quite right!, Michael Gove and Madeline Grant ask: should Keir Starmer resign?
While in London, Mark Carney and the Finnish president Alexander Stubb went for a run together in Hyde Park. Just a tad performative.
Timothée Chalamet would like everyone to forget his rather embarrassing pitch for an Oscar, so onto the next! He posted the trailer for the highly-anticipated Dune: Part Three yesterday.
RATE-SETTING BONANZA
Big day for investors: it’s rate day. At 2 this afternoon, the US Federal Reserve will announce its latest rate decision, and you can (and markets have) bet pretty confidently that they’ll be unchanged. The Iran war won’t push rate-setters into tightening up just yet, though there’s speculation that the rest of the year (thanks to higher oil prices) could be one of rate rises, not cuts. The Bank of England, European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan are all up tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the Economist magazine finally has a new stakeholder. Lynn Forester, Lady de Rothschild, has been trying to sell her stake for six months now, and 26.9 per cent of the Economist Group has now been snapped up by Stephen Smith, 74, a Canadian mortgage billionaire. It’s the first meaningful change since 2015, when Pearson sold most of its 50 per cent stake to the Agnelli family (who also own Ferrari and Juventus).
We told you yesterday that OpenAI was having some difficulties getting ChatGPT’s ‘adult mode’ right. An even more dramatic report appears in today’s Wall Street Journal: the company is planning a major strategic shift. Apparently, executives have taken the view that it’s been doing too much, and that it should now refocus the company around its coding and business users. Its rival Claude’s recent success with its business products has spooked OpenAI, which has been playing around with video-generators and TikTok-style apps. I assume we won’t be hearing much from the raunchy chatbot project anymore.
AI has much wonderful potential, but it’s only predictable that Sadiq Khan has found the most miserable way possible to use it. The Mayor of London will roll out AI-powered traffic cameras to fine drivers who use their phones behind the wheel. It sort of sounds like a Panopticon version of Cycling Mikey. The tech will be trialled by Transport for London, and will also be watching out for people not wearing a seatbelt.
What we’re reading
Britain is not ready – Gavin Rice
The problem of midwit misinformation – Chris Bayliss
Rowan Williams: ‘I don’t know whether the Anglican Communion will survive’ – Telegraph
Europe cannot be a military power – Foreign Affairs
The billionaire backlash against a philanthropic dream – New York Times
And another thing…
It’s worth having a read of some of the obits for Len Deighton in today’s papers, who has died aged 97. Deighton, the author of SS-GB among other workers, was described as ‘the poet of the spy novel’. This Telegraph obituary is a good read, and features the charming nugget that he was ‘blacklisted by Who’s Who after it published a spoof entry he had sent in, claiming that he had been president of the Oxford Union and a deckhand on a Japanese whaler’.
Tonight will see the last 16 phase of the Champions League end. The most exciting one is up early at 5.45, as Newcastle head to Barcelona level for the second leg. Liverpool host Galatasaray, hoping to overturn a one-goal deficit. Tottenham, three goals in arrears to Atlético Madrid, will need to achieve the near-impossible at home. Last night, Eberechi Eze scored a ludicrous goal as Arsenal beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-0 to go through, but Chelsea and Man City rolled over and had their tummies tickled by Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid respectively. They’re both out. Ha.
Eze with another one of his faux-nonchalant celebrations.
Good news! The Large Hadron Collider, that miles-long particle accelerator under Geneva, has come good again. An entirely new subatomic particle has been discovered by physicists at the nuclear research laboratory CERN, and it could help scientists understand how atoms bind together. Scientists spotted the particle in a spray of particle debris, and it’s been called Xi-cc-plus (catchy!). It’s four times heavier than a normal proton. All the more reason to abhor Britain’s recent decision to withdraw £50 million in funding for CERN. Let’s give the Collider some more welly!
With thanks to John Power for additional reporting.
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