From a legal point of view the major shift over the past few years has been no fault divorce, which I’d been campaigning for for a long time. This has crystallised what was already a shift in the zeitgeist, with people being less obnoxious and pointlessly confrontational. The tone has changed somewhat: you can see the relief on individuals’ faces when you tell them you don’t have to say anything nasty about your spouse: it’s just a very simple administrative exercise.
I’ve received my share of criticism from my peers. I find gossip and bitchiness just immensely boring and it always gives me a slightly nasty taste and nasty feeling. I’m a disruptor and so I’m sure people out there in the industry dislike me just as much as they always did. I always seem to provoke all kinds of extreme reactions among people that I didn’t know at all. On the other hand, being slightly on the outside of things helps me to be entrepreneurial.
To young female divorce lawyers, I’d say that you’re in a uniquely strong position of appealing to female clients who might be feeling suspicious of men – but also appealing to men who want their wives to be understood and want to soften their look. The men that do go into divorce law are a minority but they tend to be very successful: that’s probably because those that do so have got a real vocation. I find men really good dedicated workers and while we have a minority of men, I would very much like to redress the balance. The reality is we hire purely on quality and so we just get whatever gender mix comes in.
On hiring, there have been times when we have been just so busy that we have taken on people that were doing well somewhere else, assuming they would do well here – actually, that very often wasn’t the case because we have our own demands way of doing things. We have had some great lateral hires but mostly it hasn’t worked out. Happily, we have fantastic graduate trainees but there, I have to work hard to stop losing them; what happens is they get offered a pay bump elsewhere by headhunters. It’s a nice problem to have though as we just have to raise salaries.
There’s still more to do on the public policy front. I feel strongly we have this situation in which men tell women they are having an Islamic marriage. Women are married in order to have sex with them and then get divorced over texts. This is not something that England should be condoning as non-marriage: it is void marriage and clearly defective but void marriage carries financial relief much like valid marriage. That’s one thing I think they need to deal with: at the moment men are getting away with this with impunity.
People ask if I am a workaholic, but I would describe myself as immensely lazy: in fact I think I am more of an achievement junkie. I like to do things with the minimum of effort but I am also restlessly wanting to achieve. I am much more of a morning person than a night owl. If I have got something important to do I will set my alarm early and do it in the morning which is when I do my writing. My novel is called Pont Neuf, and I’m releasing it in instalments on Substack. It’s heavily based on lots of things I have experienced including some of the challenges growing up being ethnically unplaceable in the 70s and 80s in England and experiencing different sorts of racism. People are going nuts for it.
When I was at university (Durham 1993-96), the prevailing trend was to apply to accountancy, the law, management consultancy or banking.
Whilst I didn’t immediately enter the world of finance, I am quite unique in the “wealth” and family office space in that I started in politics and government relations, with a sojourn in PR, corporate affairs and private equity before working for a HNW (high-net-worth) family for their philanthropy, reputation and business interests – effectively establishing their family office in London.
I’m not sure what those of us applying for “banking” were really thinking what the career would constitute, investment banking sounded so grown-up, alpha-male, “greed is good” and en vogue (the mid-1990s saw a huge consolidation of investment banks and the end of “merchant” banks).
Private banking and wealth management in contrast seemed distant, purposely opaque and a bit stuffy. It wasn’t an attractive career option because it didn’t really care to explain what it was.
Wealth has to be managed – that is the focus of wealth management – and with this term I mean a form of investment management and financial planning that provides solutions to clients with £1 million plus in assets or ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) with £30 million plus in assets.
It is a discipline which we can also call private banking and which includes financial planning, investment management, tax planning, luxury assets and some other services such as corporate finance and investment banking. It can also extend to trust companies who hold assets and even the private client law firms who advise, structure and act to protect the wealth of their clients.
So breaking this down, it can offer a career as a financial planner – working with clients on their strategy for wealth preservation and growth: which can include retirement planning, tax, legacy and succession and business planning. Once this wealth strategy has been devised, an investment manager then works day-to-day to deliver returns that the client and their planner has objectified. Tax planning is a third role and is vital as the tax implications for a HNW – whether dividend, CGT, inheritance, corporation tax or cross-border tax – can be huge. As HNW’s purchase luxury assets – houses, jets, yachts, art – these need managing, financing and servicing.
When HNW’s need support in their business ventures, wealth teams often bring in their respective corporate finance teams of their institutions to support clients in corporate objectives – eg financing a new factory or the acquisition of a digital business. A trust company holds assets on behalf of an individual, family or business – generally to minimise tax but also to reduce other risks and acts according to a constitution which has been agreed on behalf of the various beneficiaries.
Changes have come, but a lack of trust in banks and the wealth sector has driven a long-term move amongst the very rich (UHNWs) towards family offices. The ongoing criticism of private banking / wealth management is the high turnover of staff, that the investment manager operates in his (or their) own interests rather than always for the client, and they were increasingly limited by compliance from suggesting entrepreneurial solutions that suit the client. This has been further aggravated by the fact that clients themselves have been changing: the values of the rising next generation in particular have not been mirrored by their advisor, whilst clients want more bespoke products that banks struggled to keep-up with.
All these factors combined have been the catalyst behind the rise of the family office, a privately held company that handles investment management and wealth management for a wealthy family, with the goal being to effectively grow and transfer wealth across generations. They also have impacted the less affluent as we shall see below.
To be an effective single-family office handling your own family’s investment requires a significant sum of cash as staff costs and compliance costs can be very high.
The definition of a family office can differ from one family to another – a family office advisor once wrote that to be a real family office – similar to the archetypal established by John D. Rockefeller – one needs to follow the APPLE model: investment should be Active, Passive, there should be Philanthropy, Legacy-planning and Estates-planning.
Family offices may also handle tasks such as managing household staff, making travel arrangements, property management, day-to-day accounting and payroll activities, management of legal affairs, family management services, family governance, financial and investor education, coordination of philanthropy and private foundations, and succession planning.
Sometimes families combine costs and can be structured as a multi-family office – professional staff representing a number of affluent families and individuals, often creating their own co-investment products.
Given the very discrete nature of family offices, they are very hard to apply for internships or work – however multi-family offices: Stanhope Capital, Schroders Global Family Office Services, Stonehage Fleming are easier to identify and approach for jobs.
One of the key areas affecting recruitment into the wealth sector is the widening gulf in values between the rising next generation of clients and their existing advisors.
Millennials1 and Generation Z2 have a series of values that has fundamentally shifted from the generation above them. They are a more socially-conscious generation which seeks businesses that mirror their values, are digitally enabled and allow for ease of use.
From this arises two distinct problems for the wealth industry. Firstly, the recruitment of the next generation of staff – when most smart graduates would rather go into a tech start-up, the wealth sector is not selling itself effectively. Secondly, how does the wealth sector engage the next generation of HNWs, the clients of tomorrow, when their staff don’t immediately mirror the values and thinking of their clients?
In their study from 2019, pricing consultants Simon Kuchner & Partners surveyed almost 650 high net worth millennials worldwide from six countries (Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, and the US) to examine their attitude towards private banks and wealth management.
The report found that all of the participants had at least one private banking relationship in the family and/or at least 500,000 US dollars of investable assets in their personal accounts, with a significant portion of the wealth being inherited from the previous generation.
The study also found that 60 percent of millennials were dissatisfied with their present banking and wanted a substantial improvement. The survey found that to attract future customers and build ongoing relationships with millennials, private banks have to comprehensively analyse their processes, assess their current shortcomings and potentially re-build a new bank from the ground up even if this means taking short-term losses for sustainable long-term profits.
There were other findings. Private banks also need a fundamental new brand position – old, male, pale and stale won’t cut it anymore – diversity is key and having staff that reflect the new client is key.
So private banks need to act fast and develop a ‘WOW’ digital ecosystem that highlights self-service capabilities or they risk becoming irrelevant. Millennials want the option of immediate and bespoke banking services – even so far as online bespoke investment and portfolio choice. To attract this generation, banks have to reposition itself as a millennial-centric bank and highlight the values that millennials look for, which according to the Simon Kuchner & Partners survey is quality and brand.
A number of banks have been developing their next gen offering, whilst some of the larger MFOs have been active to. But more needs to be done clearly define why millennials should pay for their financial advisory services. With a clear value proposition outlining what private banks and the wealth sector can offer, millennials are willing to spend more on financial services.
If the wealth industry moves quickly it can meet the challenges outlined above: reduce its opaqueness, become digitally-enabled and truly bespoke and so attract the next generation of clients but also of staff.
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David Hawkins is the Founder of Percheron Advisory, a firm which works with entrepreneurs, HNW clients and business families with a focus on building resilient and agile operational business frameworks and developing effective family governance structures.
My really big concern is the increasing power of the executive; this has been going on for years and years. It’s becoming extreme at the moment whereby we are getting bills which have been passed by the Commons which are essentially what we would call skeleton bills. These are really just broad outlines – and all the detail is being inserted by means of statutory instruments and secondary legislation which is unammendable.
In the Lords our options are limited if the government decides to do that. We can either put down what’s called a fatal motion and vote on it and win. That’s extremely rare and has happened only a handful of times since World War II. The last time we did it was in relation to Universal Credit. This motion was overwhelmingly supported by peers on all sides of the House, include Tories. But it was so frowned upon by the powers-that-be that they commissioned a special enquiry into the power of the House of Lords.
Of course this whole question goes all the way back over a hundred years to Lloyd George and to the Asquith administration, and the passage of the legislation which curbed the power of the Lords. The Parliament Act means that the Lords can create a delay of a year but it also ultimately means that the government gets its way. That’s right when you consider that the Commons is elected and the Lords isn’t.
Even so, we’re now at a point where the government is getting all sorts of things past Parliament because of unchallengeable executive orders. I find this truly worrying. The person who did the most on this was Igor Judge, who sadly died in November 2023. He was a convenor in the House of Lords and an absolutely masterly speechmaker. He will be sorely missed.
The only really effective check on government action are the Select Committees. These at least have the effect of making Ministers wary about what they do because they are going to have to answer to them. That fact alone makes the Public Accounts Committee, the Constitutional Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and so on quite powerful. But in the end these encounters occur after the event and that of course places severe limits on their power.
You might recall also that Dominic Cummings refused once to attend the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I had thought up until recently that to refuse to appear before a Select Committee was a sort of hanging offence and that the Committees had the power to command Ministers to attend. That turns out not to be the case.
That particular episode makes one wonder also whether there should be parliamentary oversight of the appointment of special advisors – or SPADs as they’ve become known. Look, for instance, at the appointment of Richard Sharp as Chairman of the BBC. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of that, the perception was always very dicey: he was somehow involved in brokering a loan for a very needy and irresponsible Prime Minister and then, hey presto, he became the chair!
This isn’t an isolated instance. The government puts in people who it knows will be safe on their terms: it shows the way in which democracy can be undermined. We cannot escape the fact that the institutions of democracy are increasingly in the gift of the government.
In a curious way, the Conservatives had the antithesis of all this in the shape of Lady May. Whatever one might think of her premiership, she is extraordinarily respected today as a backbencher: she embodies that sense of public duty which has all but left government. I had a drink with her shortly after she stepped down and I said: “I don’t know how you get out of bed in the morning when they’re treating you like that.” She replied: “You can do it if you think it is right.” It is impossible not to respect that.
I got a different answer with another former prime minister in a similar encounter. I once asked Sir John Major why he didn’t come to the Lords and he said: “I have been so bruised by politics, I just can’t go near it.” Well, who can blame him?
Frances D’Souza is a former Speaker of the House of Lords
“To every age its art, to every art its freedom” Vienna Secession.
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is one of the most recognised and reproduced paintings in the world and its reproduction posters adorn student bedroom walls from Vancouver to Vladivostok.
Yet this new documentary urges us to look beyond Klimt’s often decorative style at the extraordinary motivations of the celebrated Austro-Hungarian genius whose sensual Art Nouveau creations blend ancient myths with modern eclecticism, and are more valuable today that ever before fetching top prices at international auctions. Klimt’s final painting Lady with a Fan (1918) was sold in June 2023 for £85.3 million, the highest price artwork ever sold at auction in Europe, (according to BBC News).
Klimt was one of the pioneers the ‘Jugendstil’ movement known in Vienna as the ‘secessionists’ who joined a pan-European trend of breaking away and rejecting the old school along with the British Arts and Crafts and Impressionism movements in France.
Gustav Klimt’s 19th century Vienna was a time of conflicted sexuality: in society women were corseted and buttoned up but Klimt’s louche feminine depictions are bursting with a feral sensuality that conveys women’s true nature focusing on love, desire and the cycle of life from birth to death. In his private life, Klimt clearly loved and appreciated women and often slept with his models who hung around his studio, often naked, waiting for a chance to be depicted in his iconic images, reflecting an era that was deeply misogynist.
Meanwhile his elegant portraits of wealthy society hostesses such as Adele Bloch-Bauer and Sonia Knips provided the bread and butter for his lush artistic endeavours that include prints, murals and objets d’art, often elaborated with gold leaf, silver, gilt stucco and mother of pearl. There were also symbolist paintings: Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Pallas Athene, nymphs, water serpents and mermaids. His work also included landscapes and murals such as the famous Beethoven Frieze that adorns Vienna’s Secession Building.
Women also featured heavily in his private life. The artist lived with his mother and sisters and although he never married, his long term partner, the Austrian fashion couturier and businesswoman Emilie Louise Floge, whom he also painted in 1902, shared his artistic vision and dressed in her own loosely-designed feminine creations.
Klimt developed an ornate often dreamlike style and made use of different mediums to express human truths rooted in nature, flowers and the surreal, but his sketching technique was also superb and rivals that of Picasso in its simple yet sensual marks. The impact of grief, madness, love and death on the female body provided a rich source material and formed the basis of his avantgarde work.
Filmmaker Ali Ray makes liberal use of interviews with specialists and art curators to flesh out her latest biopic for Exhibition on Film that follows on from her previous documentaries on Frida Kahlo and Mary Cassatt, the American impressionist painter (2023).
Steve Coogan recently joined the ranks of the great actors with his portrayal of the odious Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning, the BBC‘s attempt to dramatise its own failures in relation to that grim affair.
To say Coogan’s performance is superb is to understate the case. He’s able to do more than just impersonate Savile, but his performance is built on the gifts of an impressionist – an excellent eye and ear. In being so good at impersonation Coogan has always known the limitations of that metier. Spitting Image, where Coogan began, always required the elevation of the small but telling detail, because that is where laughter is to be found: in contrast to what’s not absurd.
Drama is different since it requires truth: the same techniques which might elicit a laugh don’t elicit a sense of awe, terror or wonder at the nature of reality. It’s therefore remarkable that Coogan has also mastered this second set of skills. In his portrayal of Savile, Coogan conveys brilliantly the terrible passivity of the evil and powerful when they know they’re getting away with it: the presiding image is of the DJ, tipping his head back, luxuriating in the knowledge that he won’t be caught. It suggests that just batting away the guesses of interviewers will be enough: with each puff of cigar smoke came the certainty that the truth was too dark and large for outsiders to intuit.
Then there are other terrible moments when Coogan shows us how, just before an attack, Savile could display a sudden assertion of physicality. In one scene, hard to dislodge from the mind once it has been witnessed, Coogan looms before a victim, suddenly the only fact about a confined space, and we feel how strength in certain predators is concealed in the sort of wiry frame where we might not expect to find it.
Then there is the other aspect of Coogan’s performance: he shows the japester, with his almost tapdancing caper along hospital corridors – that terrible springiness in his step, suggesting both of subterfuge and a general alertness for the next possible crime. Coogan also expertly delivers those clownish asides for which Savile was well-known – the sort of jokes which sound like they might be funny but which aren’t, and which even contain a kind of threat if you choose not to laugh.
It all amounts to a performance as exciting in its actual brilliance as to its potential: someone who can deliver such a complex performance around such a sensitive issue can do anything. Great art is always a function of great intelligence, and this is the case with Coogan: every frame suggests a powerful mind at work.
This is all good news. But we might be more comfortable celebrating it if Coogan hadn’t around the same time cemented himself in the ranks of celebrities who talk about politics with omniscience while also knowing very little. Around the release of The Reckoning, Coogan had this to say about people who support the monarchy:
It’s just because most of the people that are into it all, those flag-waving plastic boats of people, I think are kind of idiots because they support a power structure that keeps the foot on the throat of working class people and I’m just not very keen on that kind of thing.
The loftiness of the tone here is as bad as the reasoning. The way in which Coogan speaks about politics suggests a man in the media bubble used to being agreed with partly because he is famous, but also because the media is not a sector noted for its diversity of opinion. Such people talk as if the notion of disagreement with their view were wholly farcical.
Meanwhile, the reasoning is poor because it shows a complete ignorance of the many good reasons intelligent people have for liking the monarchy: a liking for history, a passion for the individual character of a nation, the aesthetic of pageantry, or the good things which, for instance, King Charles III has done for society (and especially in the social mobility space). Coogan is talking with complete ignorance that such logic may exist, let alone that it might be valid, as it obviously is. This, then, is to speak idiotically while labelling others high-handedly idiots.
There’s more. After the appalling October 7th attacks in Israel, Coogan was the most famous signatory to the ludicrous Artists for Palestine letter which asked governments to end their support for Israeli actions without mentioning the reasons why Israel had made incursions into Palestine in the first place. It was an early preview of the regrettable tendency, now widespread, to act as though nothing very significant or alarming happened on 7th October to make Israel act. This position has its logical conclusion in the reports we’re now seeing of people on TikTok embracing Bin Ladenism.
Coogan was forced to backtrack, saying ‘that it goes without saying that what Hamas did is evil beyond imagination’, but a man of his intelligence knows that in the context – especially given the history of anti-Semitism – this ought to go with a good deal of saying. We cannot say it enough. In Gaza today, to omit context is to destroy the meaning of the events themselves, and therefore create the basis for excusing Hamas’ actions. It is also to remove any possible sense of regret which always accompanies legitimate acts of war – the baffled sense of being left with no choice for the sake of the memory of those you have lost, and their families, and the dignity of the nation. If anyone doubts that Israel was placed in this position on 7th October then they need to look again at what happened.
It is no coincidence that Coogan has in the past supported another Hamas apologist Jeremy Corbyn. In this he is similar to Mark Rylance another brilliant actor who has also managed to convince himself that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. There is a trend here which cannot be entirely explained away by the media bubble. Coogan and Rylance are great actors because they are capable of independent though in their acting which they then cannot replicate when considering politics: in that area of life, they resort to the banalities of the herd.
What then is going on? In Coogan’s case being famous at a relatively young age doesn’t help. Politics is to do with the day-to-day lives of millions and the life of the creator of Alan Partridge isn’t likely to be an ordinary one. For one thing, such people tend not to be especially expert on the tax system around which politics really revolves: they are financially secure and have advisors for that side of life. Nor are they particularly likely to develop this understanding during their busy lives. It was Asquith who said of the prime ministership that you have to conduct it with the knowledge you bring to it on your first day in office. He meant that there wasn’t enough time to acquire new knowledge. Today’s fame is probably similar: everything conspires to fix you in your opinions because success and busyness are now constants.
It has been said that there is a distinction between artistic and moral intelligence. This is attractive but too simplistic: we could say Coogan is intelligent as an artist but not as a political thinker. But this isn’t satisfactory because, as we’ve seen, the Savile portrayal is so good because of its moral intelligence. This means that the only possible explanation is moral laziness – that Coogan is capable of great things when he is on camera, there is a paycheck involved and he knows vast numbers of people will be watching. However, we can say with reasonable assurance, that he doesn’t make as much effort when it comes to the issues which affect others.
The elevation of the media as a sector has got out of hand. We would be surprised if Rishi Sunak stood at the despatch-box and announced that he had an idea for a TV drama. Maybe now, as the world’s issues gather in complexity, it might be a good idea if actors returned the favour, and worked harder on the detail before they gave us their political opinions.
When I sold ebookers.com, I had salespeople trying to interest me in all kinds of fancy cars. Some of them I couldn’t squeeze into. Others just made me feel like a polluting road-hog.
Several years later, I’m still extremely happy in my quiet, smooth, comfortable and non-polluting Tesla. And so is my wife, in hers.
So it’s exciting to see that Elon Musk is getting serious about setting up Tesla in India. He’s met Narendra Modi a couple of times already and held meetings with commerce minister Piyush Goyal about building one of his mega factories in the country.
Of course, there are hurdles to overcome. Despite hundreds of millions of consumers, few Indian car buyers can afford to pay $38,000 (the current cheapest Tesla). The government would have to lower its 70 per cent tariff on cars below $40,000 and 100 per cent on cars above $40,000, which will be resisted by domestic carmakers.
An Indian government official was quoted in the Financial Times proposing a 15 per cent tariff for all EVs, in return for building a plant in the country.
Infrastructure for EVs is basic to non-existent in much of India. Right now, they make up just 1.5 per cent of passenger vehicles sold in the country. And the most popular types of car are tiny, compared with the spacious Tesla saloons.
Yet like so much in Elon Musk’s career, the idea of attacking the India market shows imagination and vision beyond the scope of most other people. He sets almost ridiculously high targets – the latest is to produce 20 million cars a year by 2030, more than Toyota and Volkswagen combined.
For India and specifically for Narendra Modi, a new Tesla plant would give all the right signals: it would show that he welcomes industrial investment, is further developing his green agenda, boosting high tech employment and helping to improve India’s terrible air quality.
A more mobile Indian population, with greater car ownership, will bring all kinds of other dividends. It will add to pressure on state and local authorities to improve the country’s highways, it will aid commercial growth and improve skills. If a growing proportion of this mobility can be electric, so much the better.
On every urban Indian street, you find mechanics in their workshops tinkering with rickshaw engines and motorbikes. It would be good to see more smarter, higher-spec workshops with computer diagnostic equipment and EV charging points.
As India approaches its next general election in spring 2024, Modi needs to demonstrate that he still has his finger on the pulse of the nation. Tesla’s arrival and the consequent mood of energising optimism around it could be just what he needs.
Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published in the Autumn.
Sometimes it’s your privilege as a journalist to call events precisely wrong. Yesterday, some minutes before Suella Braverman was fired by Rishi Sunak, I published a blog here explaining why Sunak wouldn’t do exactly that.
Humbling though it is to be faced with a political reality diametrically opposed to the one you thought you were living in, I would still argue that Sunak has made a mistake. He seemed relieved at the Lord Mayor’s banquet last night, but it was the look of someone who has asserted himself when he’s not used to doing so, and finds belatedly that he’s enjoying it. Sunak is now dangerously exposed on his right flank, and faces an immediate potential trigger of that situation tomorrow should the government lose its appeal on the Rwanda issue.
His reasoning also seems petty. The main logic for the firing is that “the Prime Minister was sick and tired of it”. Suella Braverman has obviously stretched the bounds of Cabinet responsibility and been an irritant. But Sunak must also be aware that everybody around that table, with the possible – but not definite – exception of the newly returned Lord Cameron, would like to be in his job this afternoon if at all possible. To suddenly break out in anger about this looks like an immature reaction to an unchanging fact of high politics.
One sympathises to an extent. The far right of the Tory Party can indeed be very annoying: their mode of expressing themselves is frequently hyperbolic; they often act as though the British people would rise up en masse behind them if only Boris Johnson were made the absolute monarch of the nation; and they sometimes seem to have forgotten that reality is complex and admits of no easy fixes. But to hope to nudge them to one side is wishful thinking.
When I’m playing chess I might very well be slightly annoyed to have a group of pawns in a poor position, or a knight underdeveloped – but they are my pawns and my knight, and I need to take them under proper consideration as part of my strategy. They are an aspect of the only thing which matters: the facts of the board.
There are signs that the Chief Whip was charged with assessing the power of Braverman to cause problems in the event of her sacking. According to The Mail, only six MPs were prepared to defend her to the hilt. We shall soon see whether the Chief Whip Simon Hart got his maths right or not – but a lot would seem to depend on his having done so. Sunak has taken the view that the prospect of better government without Braverman is sufficiently appetising to risk a noisy revolt.
When we say a politician is gambling, we don’t usually say it in admiration: what we usually mean is that they had no good options but at least managed to make this series of things happen. In this case, we will have – as night follows day – a series of letters going into the 1922 Committee, and it is only a question of how many. When the only certain outcome of a gamble is an upping in the process designed to bring about your own removal, it might be argued you’re not in a great place.
Secondly, it is all too late to change what Americans call ‘the electoral math’. Very often, politicians today seek to rearrange the furniture and even do some light dusting on the proverbial sinking ship. Sometimes, feeling particularly brazen, they might fire a sous-chef, or switch around the boatswain. But its impact has to be minimal when the course of the ship is misguided, and the ship itself defective.
The photograph of Cameron shaking hands with Sunak yesterday was interesting. Whatever one thinks about Cameron, he held the job Sunak is currently doing for six years, and if one takes away the way in which it ended, it was a time of competent party management. His longevity in that role seems to come out of a different geological era compared to what we’ve had since. He undeniably brings stature just from this fact alone. Next to Sunak, he looks like he has come to visit the current occupant from a race of giants.
One wouldn’t wish to say, however, given Libya and Brexit, that the Cameron years marked some heyday in British foreign policy. I seem to recall, when growing up, that teachers would make you go back and do again the parts of your homework you didn’t get right the first time, and this appointment smacks a little of the desire to make good what was done poorly initially. This opportunity for revisiting is good for Lord Cameron, but arguably not so good for us if the earlier set of calamities was so considerable.
But how good will all this be really for Cameron? Even the rosiest of estimates makes it unlikely that he will be Foreign Secretary for more than a year, and it’s more than likely that having run the country for six years, he will now enjoy a period of six months as Foreign Secretary. It can likely never amount to more than a curious footnote to his career.
But while there are elements of foolhardiness in Sunak’s reshuffle – as there are in all gambles – it wasn’t entirely unpleasant to see him making it. There is still the sense that Sunak could be a good prime minister if a few more things were to go right, and if he were to grow in stature within the job. The country isn’t in love with Labour; the Lib Dems still hardly exist; and the SNP is increasingly a basket case.
What would actually change the situation? There probably never has been a prime minister in such dire need of a new speechwriter. Theresa May wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a good orator but she at least came up with ‘just about managing’ and ‘citizen of nowhere’.
Boris Johnson could always rely on words to connect with people, and when people talk of his charisma, I think they really mean that he could be quite funny. Leaving Truss aside as too short a premiership to discuss here, Sunak has been in position for a year without uttering a memorable syllable and it is this which has meant that he hasn’t entered the public imagination in any shape or form.
Only if this reshuffle were to be accompanied by a new voice could it be the basis on which to build towards a respectable showing in 2024. Sunak has never really told us a story about his premiership; he has to do that now, regardless of who’s sitting round the Cabinet table.
It is Safer Gambling Week (13th – 19th November 2023) and I decided to visit a restaurant below a casino where they have launched a new menu.
Located in the historic heart of Mayfair, the building that houses Crown London dates to the 17th century. Once fondly known as The White Elephant Club, this private dining institution was the place to be and frequented by Hollywood stars and high society. We were greeted by a brass elephant on the front step; a beautiful nod to the past, whilst embracing the present and welcoming in the future.
As this is a private members club, it took quite a few minutes in reception to register on their iPad, join the Aspinall’s membership and to prove my identity and progress into Crown London. My guest did find this a bit disconcerting until at the end of the next final enrolment pages, we were told that this could have all been completed online before we arrived.
I hadn’t brought my Passport or Driving Licence, but my guest did, and she was cleared for the dining room before me. I followed behind her to the warmest of welcomes, first from the bar manager who proffered an aperitif or cocktail and then the Restaurant Manager who so welcoming, it felt like coming home.
It was a cold crisp evening and we elected to be shown straight to the table. We like round tables, and the seating was extremely comfortable. Our serviettes were immediately placed onto our laps, a refreshing warm towel was provided and still water chosen, before a warm breadbasket arrived, and menus placed before us. My guest’s handbag was given a special sofa stool much to her delight so that she wouldn’t have to lean far to grab her mobile phone.
The dining room was extremely visually attractive as there had been Diwali celebrations the night before. There were more elephants, striking coloured parasols and a variety of spotlights. We hadn’t seen any food yet, but I sensed that it was going to be featuring on Instagram before too long and her handbag was within easy reach.
As my guest was driving, she elected to have a refreshing blackberry mocktail. There was a debate about whether she preferred sweet or bitter, and when it arrived in all its glory, a punnet of blackberry’s was presented to show the freshness from the hand-picked blackberry bush. It tasted divine until I ordered a glass of Bourgogne Pinot Noir Maison Nuiton-Beaunoy 2020. This was so smooth and chilled.
Our orders were taken, and the starters arrived promptly. Asparagus soup, poached egg, toasted almonds, black truffle and Devon crab with avocado and lemongrass dressing. The mobile phone camera came out the handbag before we had a chance to savour and savour, we did. The asparagus soup was silken green, and my guest found the egg delicious. I requested some extra lemon but to be fair, the crab had the citrus fruit infused together with chilli.
After a short pause in which we discussed our new favourite place, the mains arrived. My guest had selected a Sirloin steak served medium with sweet miso sauce and grilled hispi cabbage. She wasn’t a fan of the cabbage, but I tasted it, and found that it was sweeter than others and served with a grilled gratin.
I ordered the beef cheek, which is one of my favourite dishes. It was served with a celeriac purée, a leek and mushroom croquette. The Barolo 34 sauce was poured around the edge of the plate. I was pleased that we didn’t order any potatoes in preference to two side dishes, a Lebanese salad, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, mint with pomegranate dressing and grilled vegetables with a rosemary dressing. I chose another glass of red wine and enjoyed the Château Garraud Lalande de Pomerol 2016.
For puddings, Ginger & lime crème brûlée and Pistachio Lamington with cherry ripple ice cream followed. We were both in heaven and sipped mint tea at the end of the meal. I asked to see the Head Chef and thanked him for the feast.
As we left the exquisite taste of both deserts lingered on. I imagined that eating at Crown London was better than winning at the roulette table. Let’s talk about Safer Gambling. We never saw a croupier.
To sack or not to sack. That is the question for Rishi Sunak this week and the newspapers are presenting it as a difficult decision. I’m not so sure it is, for reasons I will explain, but there are few who would want to be in his shoes.
But then that’s also the case in relation to the financial, electoral and geopolitical state of things: essentially all aspects of his job. Given its obvious undesirability, one sometimes wonders why top-tier politicians fight so hard for the premiership: it’s like watching seagulls tussling for mouldy bread.
Sackings can often be pivotal for prime ministers. They are tests of strength and only a problem if you’re weak in the House of Commons. Braverman has some following in the Commons but she is hardly Michael Heseltine; it must also be said that it is useful to keep one’s Home Secretary if you can, since one tends to lose them anyway. It’s probably the only job in government less enjoyable than being prime minister since it involves handling immigration and crime. Sunak therefore probably approaches this problem thinking it would be better on the face of it if Braverman were to remain either in position, or in the Cabinet more broadly.
Sackings are also a question of timing. When in 1940, Churchill got rid of Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary and replaced him with Sir Anthony Eden, it came on the back of six months of expert internal manoeuvres. The famous May 1940 Cabinet showdown about whether to fight on against the Nazis – Halifax had wanted to sue for peace – had already shown Churchill to be in control, and uniquely capable of wielding power. The eventual sacking of Halfiax, just before Christmas and after Halifax’s ally Neville Chamberlain’s death, was the coup de grace.
If Sunak were to sack Braverman now, it would exhibit no such mastery of timing, but give the impression of a prime minister responding to events moving out of his control on too many fronts. Braverman by necessity is at the core of the government agenda on immigration and crime, and more or less by accident is now also a touchpaper on the Israel-Palestine question.
I’m not sure Sunak is strong enough to remove Braverman without it weakening his position still further: he lacks a General Election mandate of his own and faces dire opinion polls. In 1940, Churchill was plainly in the ascendant; Sunak isn’t.
Cohesion at the top matters. We cannot know at this proximity to events what has and hasn’t been said around the Cabinet table, but it goes to show that a sacking should only take place if you can be sure of Cabinet and parliamentary unity afterwards. Early in Margaret Thatcher’s administration during the ‘clash of the wets’ in1981-2, Thatcher had Geoffrey Howe present the case for spending and tax cuts but was confronted in Cabinet by those ministers from high-spending departments who wished to increase their own expenditure.
These ministers, known to history as the ‘wets’ (and they are very much history), argued that Howe’s proposals didn’t show “a sufficiently imaginative and practicable response to the acute social and political problems now confronting the government”. This is the waffly parlance of the soon-to-be-defeated. Thatcher noted their disagreement and in time, sacked the lot of them.
Here we can see Thatcher’s peculiar genius for leadership at work: it is inconceivable that she would have undertaken such a culling without an important policy at stake. Sunak, by contrast, doesn’t disagree with Braverman in any meaningful sense about the reaction of the police to the marches. Both would likely prefer the marches not to have gone ahead, both accept that there is a right to march provided there is no incitement to violence (which in all too many cases there has been), and they want the police to do their jobs (and would each give the police a decidedly mixed review on their recent performance).
Where they disagree is in linguistic tone and also the procedure leading up to the publication of Braverman’s original article. While Braverman has arguably shown some disrespect to Number 10 in ignoring edits they may have had about the original article, it isn’t clear that the matter is sufficiently serious to meet the Thatcher threshold. A dismissal would therefore seem petty to those who admire Braverman – and wouldn’t have the upside of demonstrating particularly forceful leadership by Sunak.
Sunak is usually good at stepping back from media-driven speculation and considering the facts of a situation. One of his main strengths is that he doesn’t panic. His tendency to seek further information before he makes a big decision, also makes it seem likely that he will wish to see how the cards fall on Wednesday, when the Rwanda ruling, the release of inflation figures, and a debate in the Commons on the SNP’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza, are all taking place.
Temperamentally, one would expect Sunak to wait for Wednesday than to risk all by going for the jugular on Tuesday and firing her beforehand. If the government wins the ruling the following day – he has essentially a 50-50 chance of doing so – it might look odd to those outside the Westminster bubble for him to have fired his Home Secretary the previous day.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has said that prime ministers tend to win this sort of confrontation. He is a politician-turned-newspaperman who is egging Sunak on to fire Braverman, and it is not for us to say that he is craving drama for the sake of it. It’s true that prime ministers are often in a stronger position than they realise in these matters – until one day they aren’t. Howe, removed by Thatcher eventually, was the one to wield the knife when she did eventually resign. But she achieved an enormous amount before that point because she always knew where she was going.
Sunak is temperamentally more similar to Tony Blair who brought Peter Mandelson back into the Cabinet after sacking him. He also to some extent resembles David Cameron, who preferred not to rock the boat, and rarely got into unnecessary spats with ministers. Well-dressed, well-mannered, I sense that order is important to Sunak. With the electoral position somewhat perilous, it might be that he has far more to lose than to gain by removing his Home Secretary.
And if he does? It’s impossible to know what chain of events that may spark, the extent of support for Braverman and the flimsiness of Sunak’s own position. But it would herald a change in Sunak’s approach to government and be somewhat out of character for him to do so. This is the unique pressure of high office, and this is the week where we will see how this particular occupant handles it.
Update: this article was published at 7.03am, about an hour before Braverman was sacked.
Is the poppy our cultural canary in the mine? Following the atrocities of 7th October, this year’s Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal has been hard to find, troubled with violence, cancelled stalls, and fewer volunteers. More and more, the poppy badge is becoming a rarity. You may have noticed this or even chosen not to wear it this year.
Whatever our political persuasion or social identity these days, none of us can argue that we don’t owe our safety and rights to the service and sacrifice of our Armed Forces. Today is Armistice Day. For 95 years, we have honoured the sacrifice of the veterans, many younger than us, who paid the ultimate price. To remember the fallen, we hold our silence for two minutes — a small token of respect which is a small price to pay against the cost of their sacrifice.
If you think our nation’s observance of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday should proceed unhindered, you belong to the silent majority, and I agree with you; however, let’s be silent no longer. Make noise with your actions and attend your local remembrance service. Demonstrate the stoic values that make our country and its people great.
To me, it’s clear that the political leaders of all colours, as well as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, are refusing to show the kind of leadership that even the most junior of servicemen and women have in spades.
The kind of leadership that is essential to maintain order and conserve our way of life.
This year we have seen our Remembrance monuments vandalised and barricaded, fewer community leaders wearing the poppy, some RBL volunteers intimidated, and one physically attacked, ironically ‘in the name of peace’. Our leaders and the leadership of the police have failed to show solidarity with the silent majority, in order to protect the interests of our nation, our culture, and our war dead. I, like many, have had enough of the lack of leadership and implicit cultural shaming of British values.
Policing by consent only works when the law is applied equally and when the police remain above politics themselves. The right to peacefully protest has been weakened by the police service’s failure to prosecute illegal hate speech and antisemitism in these marches. Overlooking these crimes is rightly causing reputational damage, and the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is right to voice concerns of cultural bias in the Metropolitan Police; it has happened before. The dangers of ignoring our laws to appease different factions do more damage to our way of life than is possible to measure.
Our nation’s right to honour our war dead is being shamed. However, we can stop this rot by taking pride in the poppy and observing remembrance together this weekend.
These days, we are so used to having our institutions and media bend to the will of so many triggered factions it’s not only tedious but exhausting to keep up with the ‘outrage’. That’s why many of us who don’t want to bore our lives past the point of endurance stay out of it, but we can’t afford to any longer if we want to uphold our values and have any British culture left.
With the decline of the poppy, we are seeing the beginning of cultural collapse in the United Kingdom. If we cannot openly and safely come together to observe remembrance without disruption, what does this mean for us? I don’t want to test that decline. Instead, let’s get behind the values that underpin our British culture and show our solidarity with our Armed Forces as they do for us every day. We can do this by sharing the story of the poppy with our children, supporting the Poppy Appeal, and taking part in one of the remembrance events and services happening this weekend. When so much was asked by so many of so few, this small gesture of remembrance really matters; you could say it signifies the health of our nation. We should protect it and be proud of the small part we can play in bearing witness to the true costs of our British values.
