By Angus Colwell
Good morning. Donald Trump said that he was disappointed with Britain for not sending warships to help open the Strait of Hormuz, while other Nato allies expressed similar reluctance. The US embassy in Baghdad was hit by an Iranian drone attack. A former BP head of strategy said Britain may have to ration oil and gas in a few weeks’ time. A sixth-form student who died from a meningitis outbreak in Kent was named as Juliette: two people have died and 11 are known to be in hospital. Rachel Reeves will plead for closer ties with the EU later today, while the BBC has urged Trump to throw out his multi-billion dollar lawsuit. Meta shares rose after reports suggested it would sack a fifth of its employees, while OpenAI is struggling to navigate the rollout of ChatGPT’s ‘adult mode’. You’re reading Spectator Daily, here is everything you need to
know today.
TRUMP’S DISAPPOINTMENT WITH STARMER
‘You know, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom yesterday told me: “I’m meeting with my team to make a determination”. I said: “You don’t need to meet with the team. You’re the Prime Minister, you can make [up] your own [mind].” Why do you have to meet with your team to find our whether or not you’re going to send some minesweepers to us or to send some boats?’
Donald Trump, welcome to our world. Those are the words of the US President, as he castigated Keir Starmer for refusing to commit to sending warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The merits of committing those resources are certainly up for debate, but the prevaricating style of Starmer is one that’s consistent, even with the President.
‘Hi, is that Morgan McSweeney? Hello, yes, how do I get this guy to do what I want?’
Trump added later yesterday that he was ‘not very happy with the UK’. He referred to Britain as America’s ‘oldest ally’, saying that ‘we spend a lot of money on, you know, Nato and all of these things to protect you’.
Starmer was at least given some backing from Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said yesterday that the Middle East is ‘not a matter for Nato’, also throwing some shade at the US and Israel who ‘did not consult us prior to this war’. He was tag-teamed by Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who said it was ‘not Europe’s war’.
Britain, instead, is diverting its attention to urging Israel to go steady in Lebanon. The UK, alongside Canada, France, Germany and Italy urged Israel not to pursue a major ground offensive in the country, after the IDF began a ‘ground manoeuvre’ yesterday to ‘destroy the terror infrastructure’ of Hezbollah. Britain called for an ‘immediate de-escalation’, and an end to ‘unacceptable’ attacks targeting civilians. Six were wounded last night by a Hezbollah rocket fired into northern Israel.
Overnight, the American embassy in Baghdad came under attack by Iranian drones and rockets, in what Iraqi security sources described as the ‘most intense assault’ so far. One drone struck inside the embassy compound but no injuries have been reported.
And might we have to… ration? That’s according to warnings from Nick Butler, a former head of strategy for BP. Butler said that unless oil and gas begins flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz within two to three weeks, the situation would begin to get ‘serious’.
Why? Well, despite Britain getting the majority of its oil and gas from the North Sea and Norway, a hit to a fifth of the global demand would still affect us. Tankers could be diverted to countries that are prepared to pay higher prices. The price of Brent crude remained at about $100 a barrel yesterday, although it’s worth pointing out that it’s much lower than the $150 that looked feasible at some points last week.
‘This is Miss Stapleforth, in charge of the pupils’ predicted grades.’
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KENT’S MENINGITIS OUTBREAK
How worried should we be about meningitis? Eleven people are currently in hospital due to an outbreak, centred in Kent, with a sixth-form student who died named as Juliette yesterday. A 21-year-old university student who died has yet to be identified. Last night, the NHS also issued a plea for anybody who attended the nightclub ‘Club Chemistry’ in Canterbury between the 5th and 7th of March to come forward for antibiotics.
Staff and students at the University of Kent queue to receive antibiotics.
The University and wider city of Canterbury have taken several measures to stop the outbreak from spreading any further. The university has cancelled all in-person exams this week and the student union has cancelled its events. The university is also distributing antibiotics leading to large queues around the campuses.
The bigger picture is that although this outbreak has been particularly severe, we have made enormous progress in the last 20 five years reducing deaths from meningitis, which has fallen by around 85 per cent since 1998, when we first began a national programme of publicly funded vaccinations. We can also look forward to a future where meningitis becomes even less common than it already is, as the age cohort which benefited from the expansion of meningitis vaccinations in 2015 begins to enter university at the start of the next decade.
The question that’s now being asked is why the UK Health Security Agency (founded during Covid) didn’t alert the public sooner. The UKHSA was told about the outbreak on Friday, but waited until Sunday to tell the public. Why the delay?
One downside: It seems like it could be a new strain of meningitis B involved. The vaccines against meningitis B have only been given to babies since 2015, meaning that teenagers and adults between 15 and 24 are most at risk (this disease, unlike Covid, tends to affect babies under one, and the 15-24 age range, the worst). The vaccine is also pretty expensive (at least £200 for two doses on the private market), so suppliers are loath to start dishing it out.
One upside: There’s little reason to think that it will be rapidly transmissible, although sadly for students, the main vector seems to be lurve. The University of East Anglia’s Professor Paul Hunter said that ‘one of the main ways this is being passed on will be snogging’. He added that ‘a peck on the cheek is fine, but now is really not the time for sharing passionate embraces’.
In addition, the University of Sheffield’s Andrew Lee said that transmission requires ‘pretty close and pretty prolonged contact’. He cautioned that antibiotics won’t provide immunisation, and that it’s to ‘stop transmission’. A positive note, he adds, is that more than a week has passed since the nightclub event, meaning the risk of further cases linked to that specific gathering has substantially reduced.
Back to reality: Rachel Reeves will deliver her much-awaited (haha) Mais Lecture today. She’ll use it to send some love hearts to the EU, and will argue that Britain should pursue greater single-market access. Of course, it takes two to tango, and you can’t imagine the EU will be most welcoming, despite minister Nick Thomas-Symonds’s recent entreaties. Reeves is also expected to announce £1 billion in funding for quantum computing.
A vote will take place today on assisted suicide in Scotland, with both sides of the argument saying that it is too close to call who will win. MSPs have been debating a private members bill by a Liberal Democrat MSP for two years now. The bill’s author, Liam McArthur, has apparently been telling people privately that he expects his bill to be defeated. One of the controversies of this bill is that an amendment made to it would compel NHS Scotland staff to practise assisted suicide – they would be unable to conscientiously object – which is more radical than the legislation currently failing to make headway in the House of Lords.
It is also St Patrick’s Day today. This means that the Princess of Wales will be visiting the Irish Guards regiment in Mons barracks. Whilst in America, Trump will be hosting the Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin. Expect Iran to come up. The Irish President Catherine Connolly called the Middle East crisis ‘deliberate assaults on international law’, and there is domestic pressure from some quarters for Martin to take some sort of moral stand against Trump.
Coming up today
Reform is hosting another rally tonight, this time in Milton Keynes with Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman. Run, don’t walk, or walk, don’t run?
Meanwhile, Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed Salman Rushdie, will appear in a US federal court today on terrorism charges. Rushdie said last week that he wanted to be talked about for his books, and that he was tired of being the ‘free speech Barbie’.
A terrifying day for us journalists: Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy will be talking about the ‘future of news’ at the Society of Editors Media Freedom conference.
AND THE DONALD’S NOT DONE
In Florida, the BBC has urged a court to dismiss Donald Trump’s multi-billion dollar lawsuit against it. The President is suing the Beeb for defamation over its edit of Panorama, in which Trump was made to look as if he had encouraged supporters to storm the Capitol on 6 January 2021. The Beeb claims that the programme wasn’t available to watch on US iPlayer, and has challenged the Florida court’s jurisdiction. Any such trial won’t happen until 2027, anyway.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace has finally got back together again. Representatives from the group held talks with Hamas in Cairo over the weekend. Discussion of the disarmament of Hamas has been put on hold since the beginning of the war in Iran. Straight after the meeting, Israel said it would reopen the pedestrian crossing between Gaza and Egypt later this week, which it shut earlier this month. Hamas had been warning it would walk away from the talks if Israel didn’t reverse some of the temporary measures it had enacted since war broke out.
Trump may be more worried about his chief of staff Susie Wiles, who has received a diagnosis of breast cancer. Wiles, 68, said that the disease was caught in its early stages, and that she won’t take leave. This pleased the President: he posted that ‘during the treatment period, she will be spending virtually full time at the White House, which makes me, as President, very happy!’
Wiles watches on as Trump speaks to the press in the Oval Office in February.
But all eyes in DC will be on the House Intelligence committee today, as it hears from something of an Avengers Assemble of security figures. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe are all scheduled to talk about ‘worldwide threats’. It’ll be most interesting to see if they’re asked about their intelligence pre-Iran war: an Associated Press report suggested that US intelligence had concluded regime change in Iran wasn’t likely even if Ayatollah Khamenei were to be killed.
Watch and listen
Tim Shipman and James Heale, on the debut episode of their new weekly show Coffee House, ask: why is the government rushing back to the EU?
Radio Three’s Arts and Ideas podcast discusses that most thorny of issues: how do we determine taste?
Bloomberg’s very good Odd Lots podcast explains how the war in Iran is chewing through America’s missile stockpiles here.
BA AND EROTIC CHATBOTS
Even if you fancy yourself as a Walter Mitty type, British Airways says no. The airline yesterday cancelled all flights to Dubai until at least June (does it know something we don’t?). Flights to Doha were cancelled until the end of April, with the June timeline also applying to Bahrain and Tel Aviv. Dubai’s main airport was closed for seven hours yesterday, after a drone attack set a fuel tank on fire. So far Iran has launched more than 1,900 missiles and drones at the UAE.
OpenAI, meanwhile, is making a rather different bet: what if we just let people talk dirty to the chatbots? The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has had to delay the launch of its ‘adult mode’ for ChatGPT, after staffers expressed concern over the company allowing users to hold erotic conversations with the chatbot. One council member reportedly said OpenAI risked creating a ‘sexy suicide coach’. The company still wants to persevere: the delay could take just a month.
Now to about the least sexy thing possible: car parks. The car park firm National Car Parks, which you’ll recognise from a logo you’ll have seen out of the corner of your eye a million times, has gone into administration. Some 682 jobs are at risk, with the administrator saying that the demand for parking has not recovered to pre-Covid levels. Here’s a solution: re-purpose them for the e-bikes.
What we’re reading
Why Russia is watching Iran burn – Foreign Affairs
Who’s the nasty one now, René? – Giles Coren
How doodles became the dog du jour – New Yorker
How popcorn took over the movies – Wall Street Journal
Notes from Washington DC – Fraser Nelson
And another thing…
Crikey. Oxford astronomers have found a new (near-ish) planet that they say belongs in a ‘whole new category’ of planets. Unusually, the planet doesn’t fall into the category of rocky world, nor gaseous planet, nor a world dominated by ice and water. All the comparisons so far (see the Times’s write-up) are with hell: a ‘global magma ocean’ is all there is, lying under a sulphurous atmosphere, and the temperature is about 1,500°C. Sounds like the Tube in summer (wahey!)
A tantalising night of football awaits, as the first batch of second legs begin in the Champions League round of 16. Three English clubs are in action at 8 p.m., all playing home fixtures. Arsenal are currently square with Bayer Leverkusen, but Chelsea and Man City both have three-goal deficits to overcome, against Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid respectively. If you can’t wait ‘til then, then the Norwegian minnows Bodø/Glimt are up at 5.45 p.m. and, taking their 3-goal lead to Sporting Lisbon, should get through to the quarters.
A mural has been drawn by the Emirates of Max Dowman, who became the Premier League’s youngest-ever goalscorer on Saturday at 16 years and 73 days old.
Good news! Amid all the debates about where we should get our energy from, there’s one undoubted consensus view: that nuclear fusion would be the answer to a lot of our problems. Yesterday, the government announced a national strategy for nuclear fusion, as well as £1.3 billion in backing. UK Fusion Energy will operate as a ‘commercially oriented entity’, and will be open to investment. This Spectator article by Matt Ridley from a few months back highlights the potential. 🚀, and all that.
With thanks to John Power for additional reporting.
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