Table of contents for 1394 in The Week

What happened The Tory leadership candidates Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss traded blows in two televised debates this week, as the acrimonious tone of the campaign intensified. Sunak used Monday’s BBC debate to warn that his rival’s tax-cutting plans would send inflation and mortgage rates soaring, and “tip millions into misery”. Truss, in turn, accused Sunak (whom her allies labelled “a totally boring failed economist”) of using “Project Fear” tactics and overseeing sluggish growth as chancellor. Both, however, committed to levelling-up Britain, and agreed that Boris Johnson would have no place in their Cabinets. A second debate on TalkTV was cut short when host Kate McCann fainted midway through the programme. Truss could be seen looking alarmed as a loud crash was heard off-camera. The debates followed a week in…

Controversy of the week Anyone hoping to avoid the mayhem at the airports by driving to continental Europe at the start of the school holidays “will have had a nasty surprise”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. Last weekend, vast queues built up around the port of Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone. Thousands of travellers spent six hours or more trapped in their cars. Sections of the M20 were closed; Dover declared a “critical incident”. Inevitably, “hardcore Remainers” leapt to blame all this on Brexit: weren’t we warned that increased checks would make travelling to Europe a lot harder? The only problem with this analysis is that it’s “nonsense”. The French have always checked our passports; the UK never joined the Schengen Area, which allows for border-free travel.…

Bohemian Switzerland, Czech Republic Forest blaze: A devastating fire broke out on Sunday in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park, a picturesque region southeast of Dresden on the Czech-German border. It has ravaged more than 30 hectares and devastated the village of Mezná, though thankfully all its inhabitants appear to have been evacuated unharmed. Hundreds of Czech firefighters aided by German units called in to help were still fighting the blaze midweek. Scorching temperatures and ultra-dry conditions have led to record amounts of fire damage across Europe this year, with over 515,000 hectares already destroyed. Paris Shutting up shop: France’s minister for energy transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, has declared that all shops that use air-conditioning or any form of heating will have to keep their doors shut to save energy: leaving them…

1 Back to Life by Jazzie B, Caron Wheeler, Nellee Hooper and Simon Law, performed by Soul II Soul, Kanye West and the Sunday Service Choir (exclusive remix) 2 A Whiter Shade of Pale by Gary Brooker, Keith Reid and Matthew Fisher, performed by King Curtis 3 Harvest Moon, written and performed by Neil Young 4 Life on Mars?, written and performed by David Bowie 5 Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ by Lou Reed, performed by the Velvet Underground 6 Sympathy for the Devil by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, performed by the Rolling Stones 7* My Sweet Lord, written and performed by George Harrison 8 Madame George, written and performed by Van Morrison Book: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Luxury: A cashmere blanket * Choice if allowed only one record…

The “Great Migration”, which saw six million African-Americans move from the South to the cities of the North and Midwest between 1910 and 1970, accelerated sharply during WWII. Detroit’s car factories, turned over to the war effort, attracted 50,000 black and 350,000 white migrants, mostly from the South, in the early 1940s, increasing its population to almost two million. The city’s black residents were crammed into a ghetto on the east side, while white workers deeply resented the hiring of African-Americans. In the summer of 1943, similar tensions led to race riots in Harlem, Los Angeles and Beaumont, Texas. In Detroit, the fire was lit by plans to build a new housing project for black families, and by two false rumours: that a white gang had thrown a black woman…

ISRAEL An act of staggering insensitivity Haaretz (Tel Aviv) Sometimes, as a journalist, I despair at my own profession, says Sheren Falah Saab. Last week, for instance, Israel’s Channel 13 decided to give viewers a clandestine glimpse inside Mecca. As Islam’s holiest city, Mecca is barred to non-Muslims – but that didn’t bother presenter Gil Tamary, who sneaked inside anyway. He filmed himself at the Grand Mosque, where cameras are banned, as if he was presenting a nature documentary, taking viewers to “hidden places where no human being has ever set foot”. It was obvious that the stunt would raise an outcry, but Tamary and his employers presented it as a coup, calling it – the first such broadcast by a Jewish reporter – “a great journalistic achievement”. Their “chutzpah”…

In the Tory leadership race, Liz Truss is presenting herself as the change candidate – which takes some chutzpah, said The Times. She is, after all, the longest-serving member of the Cabinet, having been first appointed in 2014. “Nor does her record mark her out as a reformer.” Indeed, to the extent that she has come to public notice, it has been as a figure of fun: among other things, she has been mocked for recreating Margaret Thatcher’s poses (sitting in a tank; wearing pussy bow blouses; draping herself in the Union flag), and for a 2014 speech in which she professed to be scandalised that Britain imports two-thirds of its cheese (“That. Is. A. Disgrace!”). Yet in one respect, she is the change candidate: her mutability has allowed her…

When the social media app TikTok was launched in 2018 by the Chinese company ByteDance, no one in journalism took it very seriously, said Andrew Kersley in Press Gazette. It was promoted as “a joyful” place full of short, chatty, playful videos, presenting everything from recipes to songs to new fashion crazes. But now, particularly since the Ukraine war, it has become a major platform for news. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have become the most popular news sources for British young people aged 12 to 15, according to a new Ofcom study – overtaking BBC One and Two. The reach of these social networks is vast, said David Sillito on BBC News. Instagram has 34.6 million users in the UK. TikTok, which has around 17 million, is now the country’s…

In praise of dullness To The Economist Switzerland is “nobody’s idea of a forward-thinking place”, you say. I beg to differ. The “where-to-be-born” index published by your own Economist Intelligence Unit in 2013 claims it is the best country to be born in. The country is ranked second in global competitiveness, first in patent filings per person, second in human development and first in trust in government, and does so with the seventh-highest share of renewable energy as a percentage of total energy. Admittedly, Switzerland is boring. The notion of our citizens storming our capital or the BBC featuring a running total of minister resignations until its PM is forced to resign because, well, there are too few left to govern, is unthinkable. What made America and Britain such great…

Chichester has a monster hit on its hands with this “divine” revival of Crazy for You, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. First staged on Broadway in 1992, it is largely based on George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 musical Girl Crazy, but it incorporates some classic numbers from other parts of the Gershwin oeuvre. The show’s original choreographer, Susan Stroman, also directs, and the result is “spectacular entertainment” – a giddy feast of irresistible physical comedy and punning wisecracks, infectious melodies and, perhaps best of all, a fabulous “whirligig” of dancing – “tap, ballroom, chorus-line and balletic movement, all effortlessly athletic”. This “magnificent” production will “knock you for six”, agreed Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. As with Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (1934), its theme is a simple one, about…

This six-part Australian drama set in a live TV newsroom in the 1980s has won several awards on its home turf, said Dan Einav in the FT, and you can see why. The series doesn’t have the kind of “grand themes” you might expect – it has little to say about politics or social issues. Instead, it relies on compelling characters and fine performances to create a “charmingly mellow” drama. The series follows Helen (Anna Torv), a newsreader who brings “cool poise” to her evening broadcasts but who is decidedly less together off air. When a piece of breaking news completely “blindsides” her, and leads her to take an accidental overdose, she is saved by a fledgling reporter (Sam Reid), and the two bond. Although it’s set against a backdrop…

Europe’s tallest work of street art has been painted onto the side of a tower block in Leicester, says Jessica Murray in The Guardian. A team of graffiti artists commissioned by the company GraffWerk has created a mural rising 82 metres (269 feet) up the side of St George’s tower, known as the Blue Tower. “The piece is a homage to the east Midlands city. It features a fox, in reference to the city’s football club, a tiger for the local rugby team, an astronaut to represent the National Space Centre, and a double helix – as the University of Leicester pioneered DNA fingerprinting.” Five artists, all of them local, took it in turns to paint from a cradle roughly the size of a bench hanging from the side of…

Clarrie visits Natasha but ends up making her anxious about the twins’ imminent arrival. Oliver lets slip to Tracy about Brad’s plan to go to summer school; Brad asks Tracy to put in a word for him at the chicken factory. Natasha tells Helen she’s worried she won’t be able to cope when the twins are born. Jazzer finds Tracy crying – she feels guilty about Brad missing out on summer school and confesses she’s miserable at work. Pip figures out why Rosie’s gaining weight and asks Jill to stop feeding her treats. Shula tells Alice that she’s considering a new start, working with Anglican pioneers. Lynda is irritated by Adil; she and Lilian speculate about his “Future of Grey Gables” event. Brad tells Oliver he’s given up on the…

Prom 25: Shostakovich’s Last Symphony and a Concerto for Theremin The theremin is an electronic instrument controlled without physical contact. Prom 25 features the London premiere of Kalevi Aho’s Eight Seasons by Carolina Eyck (4 Aug, 7:30pm). Prom 43: Handel’s Solomon Iestyn Davies sings the title role in Handel’s oratorio, featuring the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Sofi Jeannin conducts the BBC Singers and The English Concert (19 Aug, 7pm). Proms 53 & 54: Earth Prom An audio-visual celebration of David Attenborough’s work with the BBC’s Natural History Unit, with music by Hans Zimmer and George Fenton (27 Aug, 2pm & 7:30pm, BBC2). Prom 67: Nicola Benedetti performs Wynton Marsalis Benedetti joins the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for the Proms premiere of the American jazz legend’s Violin Concerto (6…

Herbert Diess “After a really stressful first half of 2022, many of us are looking forward to a well-deserved summer break,” wrote the VW boss in a recent LinkedIn post. It could prove rather a long one, said Joe Miller in the FT. After a “bruising four-year tenure”, Herbert Diess’s efforts to transform the carmaker into an electric pioneer “were brought to a screeching halt” last Friday when, at the request of the Porsche-Piëch clan who are VW’s largest shareholders, the board agreed to defenestrate him with near-immediate effect. A former Bosch and BMW executive, who made no bones about his admiration for his “frenemy” Elon Musk, Diess, 63, set out to ruffle feathers, in what one analyst described as “an all-or-nothing-strategy” to modernise VW. He frequently skirmished with the…

Pavements at busy junctions in Hong Kong are being bathed in red and blue lights to stop “smartphone zombies” from inadvertently walking out into moving traffic. The trial scheme was devised in response to fears that many pedestrians are so glued to their phones that they don’t look up at the traffic lights; but if the light were on the pavement, it might save their lives. The real-life version of Quidditch, the game played by wizards on broomsticks in the Harry Potter books, is to be renamed Quadball. Quidditch’s governing bodies said the change was partly to avoid any disputes with Warner Bros., which owns the trademark to the word Quidditch, but also to “distance” the sport from J.K. Rowling and her “antitrans positions”.…

Edmonton, Canada Papal apology: Pope Francis arrived in Canada this week to begin a six-day tour that he described as a “penitential pilgrimage”. On the first day he met Indigenous leaders in Edmonton, and apologised to them for the Church’s role in running the country’s residential schools. From the 1870s to 1996, some 150,000 children were placed in such schools as part of a forced assimilation scheme that has been branded “cultural genocide”. Thousands of children were neglected and abused. The Pope, 85, spoke of his shame, indignation and sorrow, and asked for forgiveness. Mariposa, California Fire rages: Firefighters were this week battling California’s largest wildfire of the year so far, as temperatures rose across a swathe of the US. The Oak Fire began last Friday in the foothills of…

“This is my final attempt to stop analysts trying to sex up the dreary topic of price rises by calling an upward slope a ‘spike’. No, there has not been a spike. Observe Mount Fuji. It goes steeply up on one side, spikes, then comes down on the other. Sooner or later the rate of inflation, now going steeply up, will turn down, but it hasn’t yet: it’s still rising. To say that something has spiked is good news, not bad. And calling a corrupt policeman ‘one bad apple’ is bad news, not good, because folk wisdom suggests that one bad apple rots the whole barrel. And ‘refute’ does not mean ‘deny’. And… oh, why do I bother? It’s lost, lost, all is lost.” Matthew Parris in The Times Farewell…

Giving a green light to the death penalty Nicholas Goldberg Los Angeles Times Even mass murderers are entitled to a fair trial, says Nicholas Goldberg. But Nikolas Cruz – who has pleaded guilty to killing 14 students and three adults at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 – won’t be getting one. Why? Because every member of the jury in his sentencing trial, which began last week, is either pro the death penalty or sufficiently neutral not to flinch from imposing it. This is no coincidence. In almost all of the 30 states that still sanction the death penalty, prospective jurors are directly or indirectly asked whether they object to it being imposed; those that do are generally excluded. The logic behind this process, known as “death-qualifying” the…

Two disposable vapes are thrown away every second in the UK, even though the devices contain a mineral vital for making electric cars and mobile phones, a survey has suggested. Conducted by Opinium on behalf of the recycling not-for-profit group Material Focus, it found that 7% of British adults have bought a single-use vape in the past year, indicating that 168 million are being sold in the UK annually; it also found that half are simply binned, equivalent to 1.3 million a week. The vapes are covered in plastic, but the key resource being wasted is lithium; each one contains around 0.15g of lithium. The report estimates that in total, ten tonnes of the mineral is being sent to landfill or incinerators each year, enough to make batteries for 1,200…

“For the second time in two years, the World Health Organisation has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency,” said Apoorva Mandavilli in The New York Times. This time the cause is monkeypox. The WHO’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has declared the disease “a public health emergency of international concern”, having unprecedentedly overruled the organisation’s panel of experts, who voted nine-six against the designation. The monkeypox virus, long endemic in Africa, has now spread to 75 countries, said Josie Ensor in The Daily Telegraph. It triggers flu-like symptoms and skin blisters, which generally get better in a few weeks, although in rare cases the virus causes seizures. The good news is that there’s an 85% effective vaccine, based on the smallpox jab; and that monkeypox is also…

“There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs.” Thomas Sowell, quoted by Kemi Badenoch “The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.” G.K. Chesterton, quoted in The New Yorker “Populism is a term used by centrist liberals to describe political blowback from the disruption of society produced by their policies.” John Gray in The New Statesman “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Max De Pree, quoted in the Harvard Business Review “I don’t lie. I improve on life.” Josephine Baker, quoted on Lithub “Curiosity is stronger than fear.” Volcanologist Katia Krafft, quoted in Variety “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe’, a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no’, and a…

To The Daily Telegraph I don’t understand the logic of giving party members the ultimate choice of leader. The party and the electorate had their democratic say on the choice of MPs at the general election, but leadership qualities are best judged by those same MPs who know and work with the candidates. Would a company allow shareholders to vote for who should be chief executive? Should viewers and listeners choose the director-general of the BBC? Keith Valentine, Tunbridge Wells, Kent To the Financial Times The British parliamentary system of allowing each member of a political party to have a say in the selection of the leader of the party is viewed with admiration all over the world, and especially in those countries where small cliques choose the leader of…

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood, 2019 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £8.99). Three friends in the autumn of life gather to mourn the fourth in their gang, taking over her beach house and falling out with each other spectacularly and hilariously. One of the best books I’ve ever read about the fragility of female friendships. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2021 (Penguin £8.99). This is a bombastic modern beach read from a worthy successor to Jackie Collins, which is already riding high in the bestseller lists. In 1980s California, the Riva family is coming to terms with the fact that, after two decades of absence, their rock-star father is back on the scene. Great fun. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, 2022 (Doubleday £14.99). This year’s must-read about a scientist who…

Programmes Cleaning Britain’s Greatest Treasures Fans of BBC’s The Repair Shop should enjoy this two-parter following the work of the conservationists who clean everything from steam trains to dolls’ houses. Sun 31 Jul, More4 20:00 (60mins). War & Justice: The Case of Marine A Documentary about Alexander Blackman, a Royal Marine convicted of murdering a Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan. Features combat footage and an interview with Blackman himself. Sun 31 Jul, C4 21:00 (90mins). Airport Chaos Undercover Dispatches reporter Jane Moore goes undercover to talk to insiders and holidaymakers at a busy British airport, to find out just what has caused the recent air-travel meltdown. Mon 1 Aug, C4 20:00 (60mins). Films Le Mans ’66 (2019) Network premiere of the Oscar-winning drama based on the true story of the 24 Hours…

SOURCES: THE INDEPENDENT, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH…

Rising interest rates are finally starting to have an impact on savings and annuities rates. Here’s the lowdown: Savings The government-backed National Savings & Investments has increased rates on key products for some 1.3 million account holders, said the FT. But it still lags behind leading competitors – and there’s a widening gap between all savings products and Britain’s 9.4% inflation rate. NS&I has boosted the rates on its Direct Saver and Income Bonds from 0.5% to 1.2%; its Direct Isa rate has risen from 0.35% to 0.9%. Given the “increasingly heated” war for savings, the latter is “a disappointment”, said Sarah Coles of Hargreaves Lansdown. “When you can get 1.4% from Cynergy Bank with no strings attached, the gap may be too big for even the most ardent NS&I…

4Imprint The Mail on Sunday Sales of corporate promotional goods bombed during lockdown, but this Wisconsin-based company has rebounded with gusto. 2022 sales should hit $1bn+, triggering a special divi. Plenty of growth potential in a fragmented market. Buy._£31.15. Caledonia Mining Investors’ Chronicle The $53.3m acquisition of a gold project in Zimbabwe (including export and power-supply guarantees) may treble production to over 250,000oz/year and should put this miner “on the map” as a producer of substantial scale. Buy. 889p. Cohort The Mail on Sunday This indie defence firm, run by industry veterans, supplies sophisticated, high-tech kit to governments and defence giants. Poor interim results bely a strong order book. The recent shares “blip” is a buying opportunity. Buy. 529p. eEnergy Group Sharecast eEnergy provides “Light-as-a-Service” to commercial customers. But its…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1322 An Ettinger shoe horn and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 8 August. Send it to The Week Crossword 1322, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Sort of angle that’s stupid (6) 4 Just parts of course? (8) 10 Retainers arranged for Africans (9) 11 Dud? Roger almost! (5) 12 Complicated relationship always involving a percussionist? (7,8) 13 One can be caught in crooked set-ups (7) 15 Scandi…

Almost half (47%) of women in Britain, and a third of men (34%), do no regular vigorous exercise; one in three women, and a quarter of men, say that their physical health has deteriorated over the past 12 months. Just 15% of British adults meet the NHS target of 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week. Nuffield Health/The Times Two-thirds of British adults say they pay little or no attention to the media debate about trans rights. However, 49% believe that discrimination against trans people is a significant problem. YouGov Only 34% of US adults now say they have a favourable view of the US president’s wife, Jill Biden, down from 58% in January 2021. SSRS/CNN…

Mavis Staples’s mission Mavis Staples is a soul and gospel icon, who has spent most of her 83 years performing. So the lockdowns hit her hard. “Oh, man, I hated it,” she says. She coped by singing around the house. “Mostly our old stuff, the songs we started singing when I was a kid: Didn’t it Rain, Help Me Jesus.” But the pandemic was only part of the problem, she told David Remnick in The New Yorker. For much of her life, she’d performed with her family: now, her parents, her brother and her three sisters are all dead – leaving her with some searching questions. “I talked to the Lord. I asked him, ‘Why am I still here? My whole family is gone. What do you want of me?…

The secrets of the super-lean People who are naturally skinny often claim that they “eat like a horse”, but in fact, they tend to eat rather less than most people, a study has suggested. More surprisingly, they also exercise less. Researchers recruited 150 people deemed to be “healthy underweight” with a BMI below 18.5, and tracked their diets and activity levels for two weeks; they then compared these results to those from a control group with a BMI within the normal range. The participants had been screened, to weed out those with eating disorders, and those who were deliberately restricting their diets. They found that the “super-lean” people ate 12% less food, on average, than the members of a control group; they were also 23% less active. But their bodies…

Dominic Cummings gave Liz Truss the nickname the “human hand grenade” when she worked at the Department for Education, he reminded his followers on Twitter last week, because she generally “caused chaos”. Truss seems to have taken the sobriquet in her stride, however. “It’s a backhanded compliment,” she assured the journalist Harry Cole. “It says I do get stuff done.” When Mims Davies succeeded Nicholas “Fatty” Soames as MP for Mid Sussex, she turned to his long-time election agent, Ginny Heard, for tips. They turned out to be mostly about food. “If you order scampi and chips, get spare scampi,” Heard advised. “And always have a spoon to share dessert, because he will never order his own – but will definitely want some of yours.” Elon Musk was accused this…

Liz Truss has assumed the mantle of the Tory Right in this leadership election, said Gabriel Pogrund in The Sunday Times. That seems a little unfair, since it’s Rishi Sunak who is the proper Thatcherite – a “lifelong Eurosceptic and fiscal hawk”. At the time of the 1997 election – when Truss had only recently quit the Lib Dems – Sunak was writing an article for his school magazine, bemoaning the triumph of New Labour and the coming introduction of a minimum wage. Like Thatcher, he grew up in a family that ran a shop serving the local community, said James Forsyth in The Times. His mother’s pharmacy profoundly shaped his worldview. Sunak delivered prescriptions and helped to do the books. This background in a small family business perhaps “explains…

“No angst, no stage fright, no bitter heartache. Just fluid, expressive one-touch football and the sort of goals you score in your dreams,” said Jonathan Liew in The Guardian. England’s 4-0 victory over Sweden – the world No. 2 side and Olympic silver medalists – in this week’s semi-final of the European Championship was rampant, refined and, “frankly, just a little bit weird”. Nothing summed it up quite like Alessia Russo’s “outrageous” back-heel through the legs of the Swedish keeper. With that third goal, the game took on “a phantastic, anarchistic, almost orgiastic feel, in which the primary objective was not to win… but to generate pleasure”. “If semi-finals are supposed to be cagey affairs, nobody had told these two teams,” said Tom Garry in The Daily Telegraph. A primetime…

Cricket An independent review recommended that Cricket Scotland be placed under special measures after the publication of a report revealing 448 instances of institutional racism. The entire board resigned ahead of its publication. Formula 1 Max Verstappen won the French GP courtesy of Charles LeClerc’s unforced driving error, leaving the former 63 points ahead of his rival with ten races remaining. Tour de France Femmes Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig won stage three of the tour. The Netherlands’ Marianne Vos retains the overall race lead.…

Trying Return of the “lifeaffirming adoption dramedy” about a couple trying to start a family (Guardian). Jason and Nikki (Rafe Spall and Esther Smith) find themselves in a precarious domestic situation. On Apple TV+. The Sandman Highly anticipated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s cult series about a group of occultists who try and capture the spirit of Death. Its impressive cast includes Charles Dance. From 5 Aug, on Netflix. Better Things The fifth and final series of Pamela Adlon’s acclaimed midlife comedy set in LA. On iPlayer.…

● Most houseplants will need water while you’re away, though some, like succulents, can be left alone for a couple of weeks. ● Give every plant a good drench over the sink. Or put the plant in a bowl or saucer and pour water on the compost until the bowl fills up, then leave for half an hour. ● Group plants together in a cool room with no direct sunlight, ideally around 15°C. Stand them on the floor on a pebble-filled tray, 1.5m from a north/east-facing window. ● For longer holidays, wick-watering can be useful for smaller pots. Place a jar of water in the middle of the group of pots. Measure the distance between each pot and the jar, adding an extra 7.5cm, then cut string to length. Place…

OneWeb/Eutelsat: starry-eyed deal When Boris Johnson’s government stumped up £400m to save satellite operator OneWeb in July 2020 (largely at the behest of the PM’s former adviser Dominic Cummings), it was derided as a “nonsensical” attempt to turn a failed company “into a serious player in the private-sector-led space race”, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. “But it at least made Global Britain look as though it had global ambition.” That illusion has lasted all of two years. OneWeb is now set to merge with its French-backed rival Eutelsat in a deal which, said Bloomberg, “bears the hallmarks of a takeover”. Eutelsat seems thrilled by the arrangement – observing that the combined group is “uniquely positioned” to compete with rivals such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos’ Project…

HSBC’s future in Hong Kong is Chinese Michael Sheridan Financial Times “Ever since the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was founded in 1865, its managers have turned adversity into profit,” says Michael Sheridan. “They have ridden out war, revolution, and the return of the British colony to China.” Nevertheless, mutual distrust has long characterised the bank’s relationship with China. And a showdown is coming. HSBC is under pressure from its largest shareholder, the Chinese insurer Ping An, to break itself up – creating a smaller, regionally-focused lender “prepared to serve national objectives, not global shareholders”. Sharp minds are now evaluating how HSBC’s “return on equity, dividends, regulation and capital base would change” in the event of a split. But it is “politics not metrics” that count: President Xi Jinping is…