By Angus Colwell
Good morning. Keir Starmer will today unveil £50 million in help for ‘targeted’ households struggling with their energy bills. He will also give an address refusing Donald Trump’s request for the UK to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz; France, Germany and South Korea also sound hesitant. Mark Carney is in town for meetings with Starmer, while Pat McFadden will unveil the government’s plans to get young people back into work. Bob Vylan is being investigated for shouting ‘death to the IDF’ again, while Sweden nicked a captain of a suspected Russian shadow fleet tanker. One Battle After Another has won six Oscars, and Jessie Buckley dedicated her Best Actress award to ‘the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart’. You’re reading Spectator Daily, here is everything you need to know today.
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STARMER’S BID TO LOOK IMPORTANT
Keir Starmer has an opportunity to Look Important today. The government is announcing £50 million in support for those struggling with their energy bills, targeted at households that rely on heating oil (the price of which has gone up by 80 per cent in a week). This support will be particularly important for rural households in Northern Ireland (60 per of which use heating oil), where Starmer visited last week.
It’s a slightly lower package of support than had been touted last week, owing to market fears about a Liz Truss-style mega bailout. To be fair, there hasn’t been an almighty clamour for one. Matthew Syed’s column in the Sunday Times yesterday has gone down well online. He argues: ‘There must be no energy bailout. Politicians should tell voters to wrap up warmer, turn down the thermostat, cancel their Sky subscription, whatever.’ Reeves herself said on Saturday that a universal bailout would be unaffordable, but that she had ‘found’ the money for ‘targeted’ support.
‘I will personally hand out jumpers to keep you all warm.’
The Prime Minister will also put his Angry Voice on, and threaten legal action against suppliers that rip off customers. He’ll say that certain suppliers are ‘jacking up prices’ by cancelling orders: the Competition and Markets Authority has started a review.
Starmer will say that ‘it’s moments like this that tell you what a government is about’. So, then, to the Strait of Hormuz. You can tell a lot about what the ‘government is about’ by the strange handling of our ships in the Middle East (was HMS Dragon meant ever to go there or not?). Starmer had a chat on the phone with Donald Trump yesterday afternoon, at the end of a week in which he had been compared with Winston Churchill and found lacking.
Trump wants several countries, whom he named, to help the US reopen the Strait of Hormuz by sending warships. Britain is reluctant, obviously, but this time we’re joined by France, Germany and South Korea. France tried to hedge, and will spend today trying to convince its European allies that the EU should send a small naval mission. Yet Germany’s foreign minister has already rejected that idea, saying it wouldn’t be ‘effective’. The Telegraph reported that Britain is more likely to send mine-hunting drones.
All of this means that thrill-seekers should enjoy watching the oil price today, especially after Donald Trump’s targeting of production bases over the weekend (which he said he may attack again ‘just for fun’). US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last night that there were ‘no guarantees’ that the oil price would fall in the coming weeks: some analysts said it could top $110 a barrel over the next few days.
And if this all makes you want to pop a pill to take the edge off, well, you might be in trouble there too. Pharmacists have urged Wes Streeting to start stockpiling medicines because of disruptions to international trade. Calling for stockpiles is, of course, a Great British tradition, so well done and all that. But pharmacists did say that ‘aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen and a range of antibiotics rely on petroleum-based ingredients’, hence are vulnerable.
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CARNEY’S IN TOWN
Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, is in London today to meet with Keir Starmer: the Canadian readout says, of course, that they’ll discuss the Middle East, though with specific reference to the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon. Carney will also meet with the King, who is reportedly interested in the politics of the indigenous peoples of Canada. He recently met with a delegation of seven Albertan chiefs in Buckingham Palace, who are concerned by a
petition for the province of Alberta to secede from Canada, the signatures for which may cross the threshold to trigger a referendum.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, will deliver a speech today where he announces new plans for getting young people into work. Among the policies he is said to be proposing is a £3,000 incentive for firms to hire people under the age of 25 who have been on Universal Credit for six months. There will also be a refocusing of apprenticeship training from middle-management positions to trades, based on the idea that firms are using the apprenticeship levy to hire graduates for office roles.
And there’s another ministerial speech that they’re inflicting on us, this one by Brexit minister Nick Thomas-Symonds who will speak in Brussels before a new round of discussions on an EU reset begins. The Times reported yesterday that a major stumbling block in the negotiations is that the EU wants the UK to charge the same fees for international students as we charge for domestic students. International undergraduate fees can range up to £38,000 a year – far higher than the amount universities charge domestic students, currently £9,535.
Meanwhile, two young people have died following an outbreak of meningitis at the University of Kent. Eleven further people from around Canterbury are also in hospital and are seriously ill. The UK Health Security Agency has issued antibiotics to close contacts of those who have taken ill. Last year’s meningitis data showed that teenage vaccination rates for the disease are in decline.
Like clockwork, the police are having to investigate Bob Vylan yet again after he led chants saying ‘death to the IDF’ at the Al-Quds Day protest in London yesterday. The police investigated Vylan last year after he led the same chant at Glastonbury, but decided not to press criminal charges. Despite the Home Secretary banning the Al-Quds march, Vylan and hundreds of others were able to join a ‘static protest’. Their demonstration was met by a coalition of counter-protestors including a Jewish group and Iranians who oppose their country’s regime.
A group of children stand at yesterday’s banned Al-Quds Day rally in central London.
The polling company YouGov will change its methodology after a public row with Nigel Farage. The Reform UK leader was ready to complain to the British Polling Council that YouGov was misleading with its polling, which was consistently showing Farage’s party four or five points lower than the other main companies. YouGov believe that the polling method they use is more accurate than others because their methodology attempts to anticipate tactical voting by asking voters who they would pick in their constituency and not just who they want to vote for. Whilst Farage has won this battle, it will not change the fact that many commentators are talking about Reform peaking, and even declining
slightly, including Rod Liddle in last week’s magazine.
Coming up today
MPs will debate the Grenfell Tower Memorial Bill from 2.30 p.m. this afternoon: if approved, the government will construct a permanent memorial to the 72 victims.
Don’t get too excited but, at 9.30 a.m, the ONS will release its annual update of the ‘shopping basket’ of goods and services used to measure inflation (yoga mats and VR headset were introduced last year).
Previews begin tonight in the West End for Romeo and Juliet, directed by Robert Icke, and starring Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe. Tickets are here: they could go fast…
WAR AND THE ANTICHRIST
In the war in Ukraine, Russia’s war economy is undergoing some friction. Yesterday, a Swedish court ordered the detention of a Russian captain of a ship it believed was sailing as part of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’. The 748ft oil tanker was sailing under a Comoros flag, and is on a list of vessels sanctioned by the EU. It was sailing from Santos in Brazil up to Russia’s Baltic coast, when it was boarded by the Swedish Coast Guard while passing through the country’s waters. It marks the second time in a week that Swedish authorities have seized a vessel.
Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, seems annoyed that Ukraine isn’t getting much in return for its help on drones. Last week, he sent three drone teams (Ukraine is a global leader in the technology now) to Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and a US base in Jordan. The Ukrainian president said his country wanted money from the Gulf states, and lamented that the US had failed to take him up on a drone deal that he says is ‘worth about 35 to 50 billion dollars’.
To Rome, where the tech billionaire Peter Thiel is conducting the next round of his closed-door lectures over the next few days. Rome marks the third stop on Thiel’s ‘Antichrist tour’ (yup): the Palantir founder is getting increasingly worried about an Antichrist popping up and creating a one-world government (which, as Ross Douthat pointed out to Thiel, sounds a bit like Palantir). If you’re intrigued to know what Thiel says at this stuff, no fear: two of my Morning Press colleagues went to his last series in Cambridge.
Meanwhile, Chinese and American officials are holding their second day of talks in Paris today. They’re being conducted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. Don’t be too surprised if nothing emerges from the meetings: the fact that it’s even happening suggests a desire from the two sides to just keep things ticking along ahead of Trump’s visit to Beijing at the end of the month. Trump reportedly wants to come away from his visit with China agreeing to buy American natural gas, as well as Boeing planes, so these talks might be skirting around those.
Watch and listen
The Spectator’s Natasha Feroze talks to the psychotherapist Erica Komisar about whether men should ever work in nurseries.
At 8 tonight on BBC One, the BBC’s medical editor Fergus Walsh will be speaking to assisted dying supporters and opponents for Panorama.
An unnerving one for those of us that like food a bit too much: the New York Times’s former food critic talks to The Daily about why resetting his appetite was a matter of life and death.
RATE CUTS AND ‘SECURONOMICS’
It’s Christmas, new year and Easter all rolled into one for… interest rate enthusiasts this week. All four major central banks are setting rates this week, with the US Federal Reserve going first on Wednesday, followed by the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan on Thursday.
All of them are expected to keep rates steady, and the recent war won’t have them feeling like taking too much of a risk. Investors will be watching for signals from the Fed about how it sees the next few months, what with inflation probably being pushed higher thanks to rising energy prices. Previously, several rate cuts were forecast for the rest of the year, but now it’s just one.
Over this side of the pond, we’ll also get unemployment figures for the month on Thursday, as well as Rachel Reeves’s second Mais Lecture tomorrow. Reeves’s last one of these in 2024 expounded the idea of ‘securonomics’ (remember that?), and got a particularly good send-up by Matthew Parris a few days later (‘a shapeless wordfest). This time, she’ll use it to tag-team fellow ministers’ talks with the EU, and call for Britain to have greater access for the single market. We’ll have a fuller preview tomorrow.
‘And now, we move on to liars…’
The more significant speech, globally at least, will take place today, as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, head of the world’s most valuable company, takes to the stage. Huang is expected to unveil a new innovative AI ‘inference’ chip from the company that departs from the ‘graphics processing units’ currently favoured. The move is part of a shift in spending from chips that are good for training AI models, to capacity to run them.
What we’re reading
Gail’s derangement syndrome is getting out of hand – Stephen Pollard
When mentally ill teenagers ask to be put to death – The Atlantic
What is the ‘post-Christian condition’? – Hussein Aboubakr Mansour
The limits of nihilism – Rob Henderson
The moral beauty of Middlemarch – George Scialabba
And another thing…
At the 98th Academy Awards, Jessie Buckley became the first Irish woman to win Best Actress, for her emotional performance as grieving mother Anne Hathaway in Hamnet – described by former winner Jane Fonda as ‘feral’ (in a good way, obviously). Michael B. Jordan, star of vampire horror film Sinners, was the unexpected winner of Best Actor, which meant Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) and Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another) missed out, though DiCaprio’s film picked up six awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn.
‘And what years were you at Rada?’
Meanwhile, it was a terrible weekend of Premier League football for the neutral. The title race now looks to be done, after Arsenal beat Everton 2-0 while Man City failed to get three points at West Ham. Perhaps even more crushingly, Spurs got a point at Anfield against Liverpool, thus avoiding the relegation zone for now. Fingers crossed for, perhaps, the funniest thing ever.
And it was another terrible Grand Prix, with both races this season failing to convince fans the new F1 regulations are wise. Max Verstappen has said the new rules – which bring in 50-50 electric hybrid cars – ‘will come back to bite [the sport] in the ass’, and that ‘it’s playing Mario Kart…[and] not racing’. Verstappen said it was ultimately ‘political’. Lewis Hamilton, who picked up his first podium at Ferrari, said the new era was ‘the best experience I have had in racing’. No overstatements here at all, then.
With thanks to John Power for additional reporting.
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