Jen Psaki has become a Democratic sage by virtue of having served in both the Obama and the Biden administrations, the latter for 16 months. In today’s polarised America, it was never expected to be a pro-Trump memoir, and it isn’t – but it also has a certain nuance which can be missing from the typical score-settling memoir. We get some vignettes of life at the top of politics. Barack Obama proves relaxed about her taking on the role of Director of Communications and then needing to go on maternity leave. Joe Biden is surprised to hear that he doesn’t help the grieving family members as much as he hopes to when he tries to relate their loss back to the loss of his own son Beau. ‘I thought I was helping them’. At one point, John Kerry makes a gaffe and Psaki learns the importance of quick feedback: it’s often better to speak your mind on the spot, than to pause and let a matter linger. At another point she observes, “Advising someone is not the same as appeasing them.” I suppose this is true, though, like a lot of the wisdom in this book, bordering on the obvious. Nevertheless, it’s worth a look.
Dir: Ali Abassi | Script: Gabriel Sherman | Cast: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Ben Sullivan, Mark Rendall, Joe Pingue, Jim Monaco, Bruce | Biopic Drama, 120′
“You’re either a killer or a loser” is the advice a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) gets from his acerbic mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) in this polarising political biopic written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abassi (Border) and Holy Spider (who is now perhaps best known for his involvement in The Last Of Us).
Cohn, the lawyer responsible for putting the Rosenbergs on the electric chair and a key figure in the McCarthy witch hunts, offers up three key bits of business advice during The Apprentice – an entertaining romp that zips briskly through its two hours running time sketching out Trump’s early career as an eager apprentice trained under the high-flying lawyer, and eventually trumping him in a tale of machiavellian morals, ethics and business acumen.
There are elements of poetic licence at play here: in other words Sherman plays slightly fast and loose with the facts in fleshing out Trump’s backstory. The result is a fairly even-handed feature that on the one hand sees the US former president as cold-eyed and devious, but on the other opines that these are the very tools of the trade for those wanting to get on in big business – or politics, for that matter. Crucially it also highlights the recent concept of the truth being a construct open to individual perception.
The focus narrows in on Trump from a broad brush opening outlining the corruption of the Nixon years and the inherent dishonesty that is now rife in all circles of power, not least in America. It contrasts the ‘losers’ (those on welfare) with the killers, the ‘unscrupulous’ hard-working income generators during the Reagan presidency that led to the phenomenon of ‘corporate greed’.
The Apprentice sees Trump starting out during the 1970s working for his property magnate father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan). Dressed in a suit Donald is tasked with doing the rounds to collect rents. One disgruntled tenant throws a pan of boiling water in his face, another swears at him. The family business comes then under fire from a civil rights action alleging discrimination against Black tenants. Cohn wins the case, as his lawyer, with Trump senior claiming: “How can I be racist when I have a Black driver?”
But Donald is determined to make it alone and sets his sights on transforming the downtrodden area around Grand Central Station where he vows to make a success in a project of urban regeneration involving the dilapidated Commodore Hotel, bringing jobs, European tourists and a facelift for Manhattan.
Family wise we also meet Donald’s kindly mother Mary Anne (Catherine McNally), and his brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick) a failed pilot with emotional problems: Fred admits to having been tough on his boys. But Donald is hellbent on success and soon bonds with Cohn after a chance meeting at a fancy Manhattan nightclub frequented by the top flight business community. Working together they soon go from strength to strength in a business alliance with Trump styling himself in the same vein as Cohn with his fast-talking intransigence. His transformation into fully fledged killer who lives by his own standards happens almost overnight and feels a little too fast even given the film’s ample running time. But Stan grasps Trump’s essence charting his character’s transformation from reasonable business man to self-seeking hardliner.
Trump soon becomes a man who takes his own advice often rubbing Cohn up the wrong way, while at the same time chosing to turn a blind eye to his ‘strange way of life’ and hedonistic habits. Trump’s puritan background sees him gradually distancing himself from the lawyer who berates him for his lack of financial probity. Their relationship eventually sours during the AIDS crisis, although Trump offers an olive branch in the finale.
The marriage to Ivana Zelnickova, against Cohn’s advice, is handled deftly and with some humour. Trump follows Ivana to Aspen to clinch their romance then falls flat on the ice after claiming to be a good skier. The Czech model is a little too sweet and sympathetic despite her purported savvy business sense, but Trump soon tires of her, claiming to find their home life ‘more like coming home to a business partner than a wife’. A shocking episode sees him beating Ivana, but whether this has a factual basis, despite his widely reported misogyny, is uncertain. Stan’s Trump may polarise public opinion in coming across as too likeable but this is surely the essence of a maverick who can charm as well as chastise and here he gives a compelling performance.
With a killer score of hits that just reeks of the ’70s and ’80 and a scuzzy retro texture this is an compulsive portrait of toxic narcissism even more relevant now than it was back in the day.
Christopher Jackson interviews one of the most interesting and talented figures in modern politics about Russia-Ukraine, defence spending, and his own career
Grant Shapps is only 20 minutes late for my interview with him, but is nevertheless apologetic when he comes online. I tell him that, given the range of threats in the world today, I don’t mind at all being kept waiting by the Defence Secretary. He laughs: “At least you know we’re on it.”
Throughout our interview, the 55-year-old seems boyish and cheerful. Although one hears a lot about how tired this government is meant to be, my experience tends to be somewhat the opposite: in general, we are presided over now by highly experienced Cabinet ministers who enjoy the jobs they’re in, and who have learned to wear power lightly. They are also determined to use this moment to solve the problems the country is facing.
In the case of Shapps, who has held numerous roles at the top of government, in addition to serving as the MP for Welwyn Hatfield since 2005, the impression is of someone with seasoned nous who knows how to run things.
Shapps begins by telling me about his day: “It’s been busy. It started with the Yemeni Prime Minister which is always going to be an interesting conversation. ‘So about your country which we’re bombing?’ And later today I have my New Zealand counterpart coming – so it’s another day at the MoD.”
The Secretary of State is talking to me on the back of a major victory, having last month secured a 2.5 per cent increase for his department from the Treasury – a decision arrived somewhat against the Treasury’s inclinations. The story, as told by departed minister James Heappey, is that Jeremy Hunt initially offered Shapps’ department the same 2.5 per cent increase but that the money would be spread over the course of two parliaments. For Shapps, who understood the urgency of the need, this was unacceptable and he made it clear that he would rather have nothing than accept such an offer. It was a calculated high stakes gamble, and it paid off.
As a result of this win, Shapps is now in a position to deliver a boost to the economy. The day before I talk with him, he has announced the building of six new amphibious warships in a widely covered speech at the Annual Sea Power conference.
But this, it will turn out, is just the tip of the iceberg. I ask him if the budget increases represent a chance for small businesses to step up? “Massively so,” he replies. “There are 400,000 people involved in the defence sector, in a range of areas from manufacturing to science. Obviously, you’ve got the so-called primes – the BAEs of this world – but actually there’s an enormous supply chain under that and there’s now more opportunities than ever for SMEs to get involved. That’s partly because a lot of what we need now are not the big things like ships – although we do need those, as you saw yesterday. But we also need clever tech – drones, and all the best kit. The two biggest drone companies were start-ups, although I think a couple have been snapped up by the big boys now.”
Meanwhile, as the UK makes these internal deliberations, conflict seems to be a more or less constant aspect of life on this planet. The Russia-Ukraine situation continues to drag on with all the appearance of a miserable stalemate. At the same time, the situation in Gaza continues to feel intractable as it has done throughout most of our lifetimes. If that weren’t enough, many predict that the next theatre of conflict will be in the South China Sea and involve China making a claim on Taiwan.
Shapps has naturally visited all these zones of actual and potential conflict. I ask him what might surprise us if we were to, say, visit Ukraine and see for ourselves. He gives a thoughtful answer. “Last night, I saw the reporting of Jonathan Beale who is the BBC’s Defence Editor. He was wearing a bright jacket next to burned out buildings. He was touring a part of northern Kharkiv. As you look at the ruins on his report, it would be very easy to get the impression that that’s what Ukraine is like.” So it’s different? “In truth, I’ll go to Kiev and it’s a coffee society. You could be in Prague or Paris for the most part, although the scene is regularly dispersed by air raids – but even then, people usually go to the air-raid shelters in not too much of a panic.”
Image of the Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps, seen here visiting a Kibbutz with members of the Israeli Defence Force, which was attacked on October 7th by Hamas.
Shapps is anxious not to minimise the overall situation, especially in the East of the country. “Obviously, if you go to Odessa near the Crimea, that’s a different story,” he continues. “When I was last there, I had to call off a visit to Odessa. I discovered that President Zelensky had been 300 metres or so from a Russian missile attack, though I think that was by chance. At the same time, I received notice from Defence Intelligence that the Russians knew I was travelling to Odessa and it seemed an unnecessary risk to take. So clearly there are parts of the country you wouldn’t go to. But there are vast parts of this huge country where you wouldn’t see anything unusual at all, and which have had no physical effects arising out of the invasion.”
This feels an important perspective, and makes one hope that one day the reconstruction of Ukraine won’t be such a daunting project as we sometimes imagine it might be. I also rather like this image of people having coffee in Kiev. Does this make us understand what we might be fighting for? Shapps goes further: “In a sense coffee culture is what we’re fighting for – it’s a way of life. Free peoples in democracies must decide their own futures and not be driven over by terrorists in the case of Palestine – or autocrats in the case of Ukraine.”
Nevertheless, the battlefield in Ukraine continues to feel frustrating. Brooks Newmark, a former MP and minister, who has been heavily involved in helping refugees in war-torn eastern Ukraine, tells me about the crucial tactical nature of the Kerch Bridge. This has been damaged at intervals during the war but so far always rebuilt by the Russians. But if we were to destroy it, Newmark tells me, we would strike a severe blow since it is Russia’s link to its supply lines. Under circumstances where it was damaged beyond repair, then Putin would be brought to the negotiating table.
So why haven’t we done that, one wonders? Newmark tells me that there are two missiles which can destroy the bridge: the German Taurus and the MGM-140 ATACMS-38. Our own Storm Shadows are unfortunately not quite so powerful and able to damage the bridge. When I put this to Shapps, he says: “In actual fact, the Taurus is exactly the same as the Storm Shadows, which have been devastating in the Crimea, and we allowed them to be used. The Germans sometimes talk up the Taurus but it has the same potential to cause damage as the Storm Shadows.” So how can we destroy the bridge? “I can’t really go into too much detail for obvious security reasons but the Kerch is a well-protected bridge – in fact, I can confidently say it’s the best protected bridge in the whole world. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds. Obviously Ukraine will be looking at the supply lines into their occupied country all the time, and how they can disrupt them.”
Newmark is not alone in wondering whether it is time to lay the ghost of Iraq aside and put boots on the ground. Is that something the government would ever consider? Shapps is firm. “Putin absolutely must not win. But we must be crystal clear: we’re not considering putting boots on the ground as that would put NATO at war with Russia which would seem to me to be not a smart move.” He adds, clearly moved by the courage of our ally: “That’s the amazing thing about our brave Ukrainian friends and allies: they’re prepared to do the hard part which is to do the fighting. We need, consistently and reliably, to do whatever Ukraine needs to win this war.”
Image of the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, seen here at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan today (14/12/2023). The UK has signed an international Treaty with Japan and Italy for a future combat air programme that aims to develop an innovative stealth fighter with supersonic capability and equipped with cutting-edge technology.
Despite this, I can sense that the vacillations by the American Congress who caused significant delays in weapons delivery this year, have been a major frustration, with the war having gone more Putin’s way this year than many would have liked. “Last time I was in Kiev, I was warning that the world has been caught napping: this was two or three months ago during the hiatus over sending weapons,” Shapps recalls. “I saw it as being a real problem. I warned them that we’re sleepwalking into something much worse.” And sadly, much of what Shapps feared has come to pass. “Unfortunately that delay has enabled attacks on Kharkiv which wouldn’t have happened if the package had come sooner. The situation is stretching the Ukrainians but ultimately I’m confident Russia won’t get into Kharkiv in the short run. But it’s an unnecessary distraction and we can’t allow anything like that to happen again. It’s unthinkable for me to have Moscow decide the boundaries and borders of modern European democratic nations.”
Shapps is also firm on the role which Ukraine’s near neighbours have to play. He continues: “But we don’t want Washington to dictate those borders and boundaries either. We want European countries to step up to the plate, and I think the UK has done this. In terms of our own financing package, we’ve gone from £2.3 billion to £2.5 billion to £3 billion. So we’ve been consistent in our approach while also providing increasing funds.”
I ask Shapps a question from the philanthropist and businessman Mohamed Amersi, who wonders how prepared the country is for a potential new theatre of conflict over the China-Taiwan issue. Shapps is keen to link the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine conflict with whatever might be simmering in the Far East: “The best way to prevent an autocrat thinking it’s okay to take over some land that’s not theirs is to make sure Putin doesn’t do exactly that in Europe.” But he also has another point to make: “We have hugely invested in the Indo-Pacific region to make sure we can maintain the world order. For example, until recently we didn’t have AUKUS, which sees the UK, the US and Australia working together to provide nuclear-powered submarines. We also have the Global Combat Air Programme, a joint initiative between Britain, Italy and Japan to develop jointly a sixth generation stealth jet fighter. Thirdly, we have a permanent presence in the Indo-Pacific, both in terms of ships constantly in the area, and the Carrier Strike Group is going back next year. Our purpose in being active in the region is to make it clear that freedom of navigation is non-negotiable and that countries shouldn’t be invading non-democratic countries.”
Carl Hunter, the Chairman of Coltraco Ultrasonics, has observed that the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent in CASD and its strategic conventional deterrent in UK Carrier & Littoral Strike both depend on SSN submarines, the fleet size of which has been largely configured for the Euro Atlantic. I ask Shapps when the submarine force will be expanded to cater for its equal Euro Atlantic and Indo Pacific commitments and the probability of a maritime war in the South China Sea? Shapps responds: “We don’t comment on our operations there – but I can say that we do operate our subs all around the world. The good news regarding this is that as a result of the announcement of new ships yesterday, we’re increasing that number. But when it comes to our SSN submarines or our Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs), we don’t advertise their locations.”
Turning to the state of the armed forces, I mention to Shapps that recent reports have highlighted that 54 per cent of potential recruits abandoned the Army recruitment process last year. Given the shrinking size of the armed forces by over 7,000 personnel in the last year, what immediate steps is the Ministry taking to improve recruitment and retention during this period of global uncertainty? Shapps is sympathetic to the question: “Recruitment certainly has been a big problem, and applicants have been far too slow to get through the system. However, for that reason, we’re currently working through the 67 recommendations put forward by the Haythornthwaite Review of Armed Forces Incentivisation. Yesterday, when I was talking about the Navy, I was able to announce that we have the fullest training facilities for eight years. More and more people are coming into the programme. We’ll get that turned around.”
Part of the poor retention figures may be to do with poor accommodation. In particular, a concerning report from King’s College London recently exposed the substandard conditions of UK armed forces’ accommodation. With many families living in substandard conditions, I ask Shapps what specific initiatives are planned to upgrade urgently these facilities, and how will these improvements be prioritised in the defence budget? “On the accommodation, I completely agree. This 2.5 per cent that I’ve won is enabling us to do lots of things including the £4 billion into our accommodation to make it lot better.”
These worries also come against a backdrop of worries around pay in the forces, where some argue that pay rises fail to address satisfactorily the scale of current inflation. Again, Shapps is sympathetic but also keen to highlight how much progress has been made: “Inflation has obviously been high, but last year we had the biggest pay rise of anyone in the public service. The lowest paid are getting another 9.7 per cent which is an increase very much designed to recognise that problem. I also think that this is helping to attract more people so we’ve got 10 year highs in terms of our applications for military services.”
Image of the Secretary of State for Defence, The Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP, seen here meeting recruits at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire.
Stephen Morgan, an ex-serviceman himself, asks about a recent article in The Guardian referring to the UK’s ‘very limited air defence systems’. He asks whether, in an era of complex and emerging global threats, the Ministry is addressing these critical gaps in our national defence capabilities to ensure readiness against potential aerial threats? Shapps replies: “We have more in that respect than people often realise. For instance, we have Rapid Response Defence Systems. We have some missiles from land, and some missiles from our Type-45 destroyers at sea. We also have other measures in place which I can’t go into because they’re secret. But we’re also in NATO so that we have 31 other countries coming to our defence in the event of an attack which is something that countries like Israel don’t enjoy and that makes a huge difference. That said, I’m working with our European partners on a sky shield approach as well so there’s a lot happening across the board on this.”
That makes me feel safe enough to make the last section of the interview not about the nation’s defence but about him. How is it that he’s managed to hold so many different high-level roles across government? “In my case, I came to Defence via Transport, the Home Office, Business, and Energy so it wasn’t that straightforward,” he laughs, referring to the turbulent transition of power from Boris Johnson via Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak. “But the process of running big things tends to be the same: government departments are all similar. You have a civil service, a permanent secretary and a private office – and then you have mechanisms to get the work through.”
On a day-to-day level, a Secretary of State is confronted with a huge flow of data and Shapps explains that a successful minister will need to learn how to sift that. “The big question when you come into a department is: ‘How do you get your head around everything and understand the subject in the first place?’ Well, I’m not entirely new to any area of public policy, as I’ve been thinking about politics for a long time, so there is that. But I will confess that it is a hell of a lot of reading. I’ve got better over the years, and I learned to speed-read early in my career.”
Everything comes down to time management, Shapps explains: “It’s twice as fast to write and read something as to have people tell you it: people speak slower than you can read, and if they write it down they have to think through what they put in.” He attributes his approach to government to his background. “I think some of this – completely counterintuitively – is because I don’t have a degree or even an A-Level to my name, so I slightly self-educated myself in terms of doing things. I hope that makes me less given to groupthink than some other politicians. If you want to stand out in politics or in any other area of life, you have to have a unique approach, and be able to come to conclusions on your own.”
The Defence Secretary Grant Shapps attends the NATO Ministers of Defence meeting at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
Given the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, I mention that many would-be politicians might worry about the safety of becoming an MP. I ask Shapps if it’s a career path he’d recommend to young people? “Well, it’s very sad that we’re talking on the day when the Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico has been shot. We have had killings of MPs, which have been rare but which are nonetheless concerning. In the role of Defence Secretary you have a different level of protection all the time, but I wouldn’t let it put people off. For the most part, we live in a country where guns aren’t as big a thing as they would be in the US, and so the risks are more moderated. Threats seem to come online by social media and I deal with it largely by not reading it. Do have someone reading it, as these things do need to be reported, but it doesn’t need to be you.”
With that he has to go and vote, and I have a moment to reflect that Shapps is an extremely impressive minister, whose story ought to inspire many young people to follow him into politics.
It’s not often you have three heavyweight politicians in one room but that’s what happened at the East India Club where the great and the good turned out in support of Guy Opperman and Siobhan Baillie, both of whom will face competitive re-election campaigns, most likely later this year. Hosting the event alongside Finito was Rob Halfon, the outgoing Apprenticeships and Skills Minister. The event was kindly sponsored by Lorenzo Zaccheo, the owner and founder of the international haulage company Alcaline.
Baillie began by telling the room the story of her ascent to Parliament. “I grew up on a council estate and flunked all my exams,” she recalled, before attributing her success to love of hard work. “What I do like is to work – I will work and work until I achieve something.” Looking ahead to the General Election, Baillie said: “It is a genuine pleasure to work for Rishi Sunak. He is always incredibly thoughtful. What we are doing is solving quite a few long term problems but not necessarily getting the air time on the news.”
When Baillie handed over to Opperman, he was realistic: “Let’s be honest. There are very few of you in this room who think the Conservatives are going to win the next general election. Most of you would like that, but at the moment you think it’s not going to happen. But the race is not over until it has been run. I admit that it is year 14 of the marriage and we are not quite as attractive as we were. Furthermore, it is a factual reality that we have dealt with 12 per cent inflation. There are three wars of real significance that are affecting this country but who is best placed to take us back to growth and prosperity?”
At which, Opperman and Baillie took questions beginning with Zaccheo, who outlined a major problem in the haulage industry. He explained that there is currently a 90/180 day rule for travellers to the EU Shengen area which is hugely impacting drivers’ ability to carry out their jobs. As things stand, Zaccheo pointed out, the Border Force penalties are not fit for purpose and provide zero incentive to drivers or hauliers to report clandestine entrants. It is only the innocent and not organised crime that are being penalised.
Opperman replied, plainly taking the problem seriously. “I am acutely aware that there is an issue here and we are very conscious of it. It relates to regulation in the Treasury. So bear with us: we are working on it to try and find a way forward.”
Zaccheo also raised the question of cabotage which isn’t being enforced effectively by the Drivers and Vehicles Standards Agency (DVSA,) and therefore taking work away from UK haulers. In addition, Zaccheo argued that very low pay in parts of the EU for HGV drivers is driving the movement of clandestine entrants into northern France. There low-paid eastern European drivers are easily convinced to transport immigrants from the east and the south and drop them in supposedly “secure” parking areas in northern France where they then gain access to UK vehicles.
This led to a discussion on immigration with all three MPs having recently voted for the Rwanda Bill. Baillie explained: “We can’t be squeamish when it comes to dealing with the problem, but let’s not forget that this is a very kind and compassionate country. We’re not going to be able to express our values if we’re not tackling illegal immigration hard. The Conservatives are being battered on the BBC, but it’s not compassionate to do nothing.”
Baillie spoke also about her successful campaign to extend the childcare provision. “The reality for families at the moment is that childcare is a second mortgage,” she explained, before adding: “Housing is the big ticket issue which needs to be dealt with.”
Opperman took a question on the apprenticeship levy. “The apprenticeship levy is very easy to announce but really tough to deliver and it takes years and years. Most of the product of Rob Halfon’s great work won’t be seen until ten years from now. Childcare’s the same: we’re subsidising childcare to get more people back to work to get more taxes in the long term. It’s about policy – we have to deliver the reality on the ground.”
Once the questions and answers had finished, Halfon had the floor. “After 25 years both as candidate and as an MP I’ve decided to step down,” he told the room. “In 2008, I went into a constituency in Harlow. I walk into a grim concrete building on a rainy day, and sit down with people from the Prince’s Trust and Catch-22. They start talking to me about skills and apprenticeships and how they’d love to do them, but the opportunities weren’t on offer. I came out of that building and said to myself: ‘If I get elected, I’ll make it my mission to champion apprenticeships and skills’.”
Fast forward 25 years and Halfon has been as good as his word and can look back on an impressive array of achievement. “What we’ve done on apprenticeships and schools is sadly the best-kept secret in government. Now we have apprenticeships for everything from aeronautics to zoology. FE used to be called the Cinderella sector; I hated that name with every fibre of my being. I went to visit FE colleges all over the country. I always used to say that Cinderella became a member of the Royal Family and we need to banish the Ugly Sisters of snobbery and under-resourcing which we have done.”
What the future holds for these three MPs only time will tell. But there’s no doubt that these are parliamentarians of rare passion, who show that politics can be a fulfilling and exciting career where there’s a real chance to make a difference.
Iworked on a programme with NASA for 27 years doing the James Webb Space Telescope. It was around the early 2000s, and I was based in California. I’d just finished launching one of the-earth observing satellites which NASA was doing, when my buddy came into the office and said: “We’re going to build a telescope. Want to join?”” How long will it be?” “It’ll only be a few years.” Twenty years later, I was still working on it.
When I started at JWST, there were three of us. I ended up being in the highest role, the Mission Operations Manager, but I began as an operations engineer. We grew to 700 people – it changed over the years. If you keep your eyes open, people come and people go, and there are always opportunities on a large project like that.
The telescope is rewriting astronomers’ and cosmologists’ understanding of how the universe works and how it was created. There are disruptions into the Big Bang Theory. Some of its measurements and observations are baffling scientists: we’re looking at galaxies which shouldn’t be where they are, and making us think the universe may be older than we thought. It really is an engineering marvel. Whatever it takes a picture of it’s incredibly accurate. Our basic understanding is that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, and that galaxies didn’t start forming until about 500,000 years into that process. But the telescope is taking pictures of galaxies which are older still – and that means we got something wrong somewhere. Scientists are baffled by that, and it can be funny to see them try to explain it: they can’t.
I don’t think people really appreciate what it took to get it there. You see on TV programmes about how we invented ten different technologies to make the telescope work: that engineering side is awesome. But to truly operate it was something else: it doesn’t operate itself. That’s been lost: we’re talking about regular people who worked it day to day, and planned its operations. When it first went into orbit it was 24/7. Who are these people who make this happen every day? It’s not the astronomers.
Up until now, nobody has had something this powerful with which to look at anything. They’re just surprised by everything they see. Think of the early phones – they took quite good pictures. Then they came up with the digital camera and the pictures were amazing. Television is the same: now everybody has such good resolution on their TV that people on the screen looks almost 3D. The telescope is like that: the resolution of the image and the crispness of its data is just really cool. We won’t know for a good while the data is telling us but the astronomical community is already very excited by the data we’re getting.
The more the telescope gets used and looks for other signs of world, it makes me feel more special that there’s life on this planet to this degree. There may be life out there, but I always re-centre myself and think: ‘We’re pretty special – look at what we’ve done as a species.’ Maybe there is life in this area of the universe: but we constantly look at thousands of planets, and there’s isn’t life there so far. In the end, every observation solidifies that we are special – that doesn’t have to make us big-headed. In fact, it’s humbling.
If we did discover life on another planet, that would be a game-changer. But then we’d have to think about how to get there, and we don’t have very advanced jet propulsion systems. It’ll be interesting to see when we find something what the next thought process is. We have four billion years before our sun starts making life here a problem, so our species will have to evolve. We haven’t been on the planet a million years – in a star timeframe, that’s nothing. Give it another hundred thousand years, and another and another. What will we look like? Can we go across the galaxy quickly?
We need to go to the moon before we go to Mars. It’s easier and closer – if something bad happens, you can get home rightaway. Mars is a six month trip. In order to go to the next set of levels, you’ll need to colonise the moon, take what you learn then go to Mars, or one of the moons of Jupiter. People who colonise will need to not come back to earth ever. Their bone structure, and their chemical composition will change – our future self is going to look very different indeed.
I meet the entrepreneur and publisher Harry Hyman in his offices on Haymarket. He is ensconced in a corner office surrounded by John Piper prints and art which speaks to his love of theatre.
Hyman has had an interesting life, succeeding in both the healthcare and publishing sectors. I am keen to know how it all began and ask him about his upbringing: “My parents both came from an immigrant background,” he tells me. “My father’s family came from Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1900. One lot came from what was then Belarus and the other lot came from what is now Poland but both I think then were under the Soviet influence. They probably wanted to get to New York, but they ended up in London by mistake, or because they didn’t have enough money to get there.”
And on his mother’s side? “She was Anglo-Indian – and that meant nobody liking you, neither the Indians nor the British. People didn’t have very much money and so I think they were both very keen for people to do well and education was a very important part of that. It was drilled into you that education was vital.” He laughs: “I still believe that one of the few things that Tony Blair actually said that was probably right is: ‘Education, education, education’.”
And how was Hyman’s education? “I knuckled down and did very well. I went to Cambridge, and graduated there with a first class degree in geography. I stayed for one year to think about doing a PhD but felt that wasn’t for me: it was too specialist and not very exciting. It’s a weird thing that when you study geography the more you go into a particular area it becomes like another subject: so for a physical geographer you almost become a geologist; a bio geographer becomes almost a biologist; an economic geographer becomes almost an economist; and a historical geographer becomes almost a historian.”
But the year was 1979 and Thatcher was on the rise. Hyman intuited the enormity of the shift, and decided to enter the business world at perhaps one of the most opportune times in history: “I went off to Price Waterhouse and followed this quite conventional route of becoming a chartered accountant which I did very well at and I enjoyed my three and a half years there,” he recalls.
However things were about to change for Hyman – and as so often happen, due to his meeting the right person at the right time. “I met this really entrepreneurial dynamic financier called Michael Goddard who worked at a business called Baltic plc and I had 11 very enjoyable hard-working years where I learned a lot about finance and about business and about negotiation but it instilled in me a desire to do my own thing.” Around that time Hyman had also begun to take an interest in healthcare. “I got very interested in health, and was interested to take the techniques of asset finance and structured finance, which was what Baltic specialised in, and apply that to different parts of the public sector which had been starved of capital because the Treasury controlled the purse strings.” Hyman saw that Thatcher’s administration was serious about shaking things up: “Norman Lamont introduced the Private Finance Initiative and I thought that was quite an interesting turning point; it was an opportunity for the government to form partnerships with the private sector to invest in infrastructure.”
It was to be a huge success. Hyman left Baltic in 1994 to start his own company Nexus. This business set up Primary Health Properties; Hyman would manage it for 27 years, and only stopped being CEO in April 2023.
When Hyman set up the healthcare business was he partnering with government from day one? “I got very interested in the fact that GPs, although they are independent contractors, have a contract with the NHS: as part of that they get their rent reimbursed to them by the NHS and of course the NHS is part of the British government. Therefore from an investor’s standpoint although your tenant is actually a group of GPs, the payor of the rent is actually the NHS which is the government: so you have a gilt-edged income stream even though your tenant is just a group of professionals.”
For Hyman, this was a clear opportunity: “I saw that there was what I would call a yield and covenant arbitrage there and so set up the business to take advantage of that and to act as a funnel of capital back in, in order to modernise the NHS. Even today, 40 per cent of all primary care premises in the country are sub-standard and you are seeing a paradigm shift effectively away from an old-fashioned converted house where you had your polio jab on a sugar cube with a single handed GP giving it to you into a much more modern medical centre.” The beauty is that these centres are much more modern and contain ‘a raft of ancillary services’. This is, of course, also in the interests of the doctors. “They don’t want to take on the capital burden of providing a £9 or 10 million building: they are quite happy for a third party landlord like Primary Health Properties to be that partner and now our portfolio is around £2.8 billion: we have 514 centres, of which 21 are in Ireland and it’s a very interesting and safe and secure business model.”
It sounds it, and the success of the venture has enabled Hyman to diversify into publishing. “Here at Nexus we publish B2B magazines and we run events around them. Our titles are Health Investor, Education Investor, Caring Times, Nursery Management, and today we have got a small publication called Nutrition Investor and we have Independent Schools Management. The theme of those is very much health and education. Property, health and education has been my raison d’etre for the past 30 years.”
I say that publishing is a difficult sector compared with healthcare property. Why put himself through the stress? “The original reason is because I couldn’t find anything I wanted to read and so Health Investor is a B2B magazine focused on investors that are providing contracted out services to the NHS. It’s basically an events business. You obviously have to have content. I don’t think you can run the events without titles but as you know we’ve moved from a non-digital basis to a digital basis and people will pay for high quality content but it is quite hard on a lot of businesses who have really struggled with that.”
And what does Hyman think of the prospect of a Labour government? “I think there’ll be a resetting of the clock, and that will allow someone to have a slightly longer timescale. I think Covid and the political contortions of late have given governments quite a short term time horizon which is not very good in terms of ensuring that infrastructure goes in to the built environment.”
But that doesn’t mean that Hyman agrees with Labour, especially when it comes to its commitment to impose VAT on private school fees. “Will that apply to early years? Will it apply to all sorts of education? Will it apply to university tuition? Is it going to be five, eight, ten, or 20 per cent? How is that going to work? It sounds like a great manifesto commitment but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it never got legislated for because it will push much more demand back into the state sector which is hard pressed anyway. In France everyone goes to a state school as I understand it. You are then talking about a wholesale system change.”
Hyman’s success has allowed him time for his passions, chiefly opera. He founded the International Opera Awards in 2012, with a view to helping the sector. What was it that drew him to classical music? “They are quite profound stories. The topics in Shakespeare are enduring and unfortunately people think it’s all DJ toffs walking round Glyndebourne. Most opera houses go out of their way to try and encourage a younger generation of opera goers otherwise the whole audience will be dead in 10 or 15 years’ time.”
The problem is that television has encroached on the economics of live performance, so it’s not an easy sector in which to pay the bills. “My shtick is to try and encourage younger people to make the grade from music college through to a proper career in opera whether they be singers, directors, musicians, or conductors – but it’s tough. Last year we gave out £100,000 worth of bursaries to 20 people: it’s not that enormous a sum of money but can make the difference between someone stopping their career and carrying on.”
The plight of even the most talented musicians is an extremely difficult one. “You go to music school and then you get your music qualification – but then you have to make it as an artist and that will require you to sing in a chorus or hope to get spotted and get a supporting role. That in itself is difficult – and if you are not from a less well-off background or if you are an overseas person, it’s even harder. We have supported some Ukrainian people who have the right to be here as a student but they don’t have the right to work.”
This interest brings him full circle back to his parents. “They were very interested in opera. I first went in 1984, and it has been a journey since. I like Wagner: his music is absolutely sensational and the stories he writes about are primeval almost. The Ring is very profound isn’t it? It’s about man’s quest for money and power and ends in disaster. They all end up regretting having it but it’s this lust that drives them.” And with that, I head back out onto Haymarket, reflecting that it’s not often you talk about Wagner and the private finance initiative in the same conversation – but Hyman is an interesting man with a broad frame of reference.
There were two standout news stories this week to cheer the clean energy sector.
First, Microsoft’s commitment to power its data centres with renewable electricity in a $10 billion deal. This will add 10.5 gigawatts of generating capacity, the equivalent of powering 1.8 million homes, and is eight times bigger than the next-largest corporate renewable electricity deal, between mining company Rio Tinto and an Australian solar company.
Microsoft needs the extra power because it’s forging ahead with new data centres to service AI and cloud computing customers, part of an upsurge in energy demand in the United States, soon to be repeated in Europe.
“The nationwide [United States] forecast of electricity demand shot up from 2.6 per cent to 4.7 per cent over the next five years,” reported Grid Strategies in a recent report. It predicts that more than $150 billion will be invested in data centres up until 2028, alongside more than 200 major manufacturing facilities.
In 2023, corporate deals for a record 46 gigawatts of new solar and wind capacity were announced, as companies like Amazon and Microsoft sought to reduce their carbon footprints.
All this activity and development is positive news, but the context is important. There’s such a huge growth in demand for energy that some believe more coal, oil and gas sources may also be needed, negating any positive impact on climate change. “Gas is the only cost-efficient energy generation capable of providing the type of 24/7 reliable power required by the big technology companies to power the AI boom,” said one energy investor. The intermittent nature of wind and solar power is highlighted by fossil fuel lobbyists as a central problem.
Renewable energy champions argue that, by contrast, AI can help solve the reliability issue for wind and solar power, through its predictive abilities. In a second clean energy breakthrough, the G7 this week announced a renewable energy storage target: a six-fold increase in capacity by 2030 using batteries, hydrogen and water.
The International Energy Agency foresees batteries making up 90 per cent of new storage capacity, with hydroelectric power accounting for a smaller share. Batteries have enjoyed a dramatic uptake in demand over recent years, as their costs have fallen by 90 per cent since 2009. Batteries added 42 gigawatts to global electricity supplies in 2023. We will doubtless hear more self-serving predictions from the hydrocarbon industry about how renewable energy cannot power the economies of the future, so it’s important to pay attention to developments like these: massive renewable energy projects and game-changing storage solutions.
We’re in the middle of an energy transition, with incremental progress taking place all around us, whatever the fossil fuel lobby might say.
Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers.com, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. Since then, he has created the largest solar PV and hydrogen businesses in Romania. Dinesh’s latest book is The Indian Century – buy it from Amazon at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1738441407/
When I hear the pessimistic talk about the upcoming General Election, I think back to the 2017 vote during which the Conservatives went more than 20 points ahead in the polls. Everyone thought that it was going be a landslide. In fact by the time we got to election day, we ended up forfeiting our majority and managing to govern with the support of the DUP.
At the moment people are telling you that the next election is a foregone conclusion since Labour are 20 points ahead, and that there is an automatic inevitability regarding what will happen in the next election. However, there’s a lot we can still do: we can ensure that Labour are facing the kind of scrutiny that they have managed to evade for the last four years and see that the holes and weaknesses in their policy prospectus are held up to effective attack.
Of course, if we are going to do that, we have got to move the conversation on from some of the introspective chatter to which Conservative MPs can sometimes be prone. We need to start by being proud of our achievements.
For instance, the education reforms that we brought in in the early years of Conservative-led government were bitterly contested. We were told that those reforms would make no difference and that we were on an ideological jolly that would end in tears. Thirteen years later, and we have seen a decisive move towards higher standards for all of our children and for those of us who care about social mobility. One of the most striking things, is that it’s not just the case that school standards have improved – it’s also the case that the poorest children have benefitted most. When we came to power in 2010, more boys from Eton went to Oxford and Cambridge than boys eligible for free school places. Now we have a dramatically increased number of children from disadvantaged backgrounds at our best universities than at any time since the Second Wold War.
It is not just strength and confidence in our record that we need. We also need to make sure that we go into the next election with a manifesto which is based on hope. We have to show that as a party that believes in capitalism that the next generation has the chance to acquire capital and a chance to acquire the homes that they will grow their families in and pass on to the next generation. We also need to make sure that we have policies on the provision of infrastructure – on liberating industry and enterprise, on having a tax structure that makes sure that people will put in that extra effort in order to make this country great.
Thirdly, we need to make sure that people understand the risk of Labour as well. In many areas Labour are weak, where their policy mixes are either entirely toxic or entirely absent and it is our responsibility to make sure that at the next election rather than it being simply a referendum on this government, it becomes a choice between the chance to extend opportunity and a Labour party who will put everything that we have achieved in the last 13 years in jeopardy.
Let’s take the welfare system as an example. Under the Conservatives this has been reformed though universal credit, and this was another policy which was vigorously contested by the opposition. It has resulted not only in operational success but it also meant that during the Covid-19 pandemic we were able to get help to those who most needed it remarkably quickly. Under Labour between 1997 and 2010, a million more people became unemployed. By stark contrast, we have created more than a million new jobs while we have been in power. To my mind the best thing that any government can do is to provide people with a route to independence; ultimately, the enduring way of tackling poverty is to ensure that people have the skills and the support to make their own life and make their own choices, rather than being dependent on the state.
One of the problems that we have sometimes as Conservatives is that we risk being seen as administrators and not evangelists. That’s a criticism which is often levelled at ministers. The word narrative is overused, but politicians do need to tell a story. They need to explain why it is that we are taking this difficult decision, or moving in that particular way. We need to have a vision of how individuals can flourish in the country we want to build and that means being able to respond instinctively and coherently to new challenges.
Everybody in Westminster is fascinated and interested by politics. Most people in the public at large are wise enough not to waste too much time paying attention so when we do have their attention during a General Election campaign, we have got to be clear. During the Brexit referendum, the “Take Back Control’ slogan encapsulated a set of arguments which you could then unpack in a variety of areas which allowed you to then make the arguments that you needed to make. The best simple sentences are the product of careful thought and the careful thought can then be unpacked once the simple sentence is valid.
Of course, we need to do all this while also facing inflation. It is simply the case that as inflation increases, interest rates increase, and access to capital becomes more difficult for people. That has ramifications in my Department: house builders themselves will build fewer homes during an economic downturn because they want to keep the price of the product that they are selling from falling too far. We should not be passive in the face of those challenges. Firstly, we have to make the planning system work, and balance the desire that people have to protect the quality of life which they have in particular communities. One of the big challenges that we have in England particularly is that our cities – which is where many young people, of course, want to live and work – are much more geographically spread out than comparable cities in Europe or in the US. There are a huge number of brownfield sites and buildings which are suitable for turning into new housing. Many of these are currently either prevented from being turned into new homes by the obstruction of the Mayor of London, or by difficulties with the effectiveness of the planning system.
In tackling all of these things, we have got to have a series of solutions that deal with the geographical challenges that the housing market faces in different parts of the country. More than that, we also need to change some of the incentives: at the moment the incentive is very much for many local authorities to turn down housing. We need them to welcome it by making sure that they get a bigger share of uplift that comes from planning permissions being granted: it’s only when you create those incentives that you can begin to let local politicians and local people see the double benefit that comes from new development.
An emphasis purely on quantity is the biggest problem. If you have someone who is thinking about a new development – whether that is digging an existing brownfield site in one of our great cities or expanding a settlement – if they think about that development in terms of making it beautiful then it gives real life to a community and creates an attractive destination. Take Poundbury as an example, which I’m aware not everybody likes. But the King deliberately set out to build a new suburb with Leon Krier who is a very distinguished neo-classical architect to help. He got in landscape architects like Kim Wilkie and he thought: “We are going to make it beautiful.” As a result now, even though it was derided by the fashionable end of the architectural community, houses in Poundbury fetch more on the open market than houses in Dorchester itself. It is rare that you have a new development attached to an existing town where the new homes are more attractive and more valuable.
We managed to do this in Edinburgh in the 18th century. We managed to do it in parts of London. We have been less good at it recently but it seems to me that while not everyone would wish to live in Poundbury and it’s not necessarily to everyone’s taste it is certainly far more to their taste than many of the developments that have been created elsewhere.
We have time now to reflect on some of the mistakes we have made, and be honest with the electorate about what they are. But we also need to be clear about what we have achieved and what our values are. We don’t have much time but we do have just enough to be able to do that and for me it’s bracing to think about the essence of the argument. Keir Starmer does not have a programme or a platform. He does not have a thought-through sense of where he wants to take this country. So this election will be tough but we are absolutely capable of winning it.
I remember, aged 14, reading Socrates’ famous dictum ‘’the unexamined life is not worth living” in the book Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaardner and feeling inspired by it. The book was written as an introduction to philosophy. I was always curious. I wanted to ask the “big” questions. Philosophy made sense to me . I enjoyed knowing there was a body of wisdom spanning two millennia to help me think about what really mattered. This passion for the subject led to my successful campaign to get philosophy on to my school’s A Level syllabus.
Simply translated philosophy means the “the love of wisdom”. It gets a bad reputation for being an abstract and opaque subject. Yes, it is a subject with a long history, but it is not outdated. Its concepts have a timeless application: rational reflection and analysis. It can be criticised for not being a science and therefore not providing definitive answers. This is to misunderstand the position as in practice philosophy provides the framework which enables problem solving.
Philosophy is also a broad field that covers a wide range of topics. It informs ethical debate, political theory, the function of language/communication, the relationship between the mind and the body and more recently artificial intelligence. It asks questions such as: “What is the nature of justice?” “What is the good life?”; “What is truth?”; “What should you do and why?.
When discussing the subject, I am often asked“..but what can a philosophy undergraduate really offer future employers?” or “How can I convince my parents that philosophy is a worthwhile use of three years at university?”. To help answer these questions, I reached out to Dr Stevie Makin, who was one of my philosophy lecturers at Sheffield University. He recently retired after 32 years of teaching philosophy undergraduates. His response to the question was both unequivocal and enlightening. He said “Employers want people who can think. Problems are best dealt with by thinking. And philosophy teaches you how best to think – Clearly; Critically; Carefully. That’s what employers are after. The actual content of the job, what it is that they want you to be good at thinking about, is down to whatever career you are drawn to, be it law, school teaching, accountancy, social work, healthcare … whatever. They all require people who are good at thinking. Indeed, if a career path didn’t require good, clever, creative, flexible and trained thinkers, then that career is likely to be shunted off to AI in the coming years”.
When philosophy is presented in these terms its value seems more obvious. What employer would not want an employee who (a) had chosen a degree which encourages rigour of thought and problem solving and (b) is the kind of individual who is drawn to examining and interrogating ideas for the benefit of the employer/colleagues or clients.
Philosophy is therefore a great foundation for a range of careers. I read philosophy at university knowing I wanted to be a lawyer. It was the sage advice from my cousin (who at the time was a criminal barrister) that I should read a subject that I was passionate about and would enjoy. I therefore read philosophy at university knowing that on completion I would then immediately begin my legal qualifications (at the time about 50% of newly qualified lawyers were non-law undergraduates). I am still, to this day, very grateful for this advice because philosophy is a discipline that I have used throughout my life both professionally and personally. It is important to think about your choice of degree in a wider context.
Whilst a degree in philosophy enabled me to pursue a career in law it can equally provide the foundational skills which would be relevant to a full spectrum of career options from law, accounting or finance through to careers such as a government ethicist, filmmaker, journalist or a computer scientist. Philosophy helps to facilitate meaningful discussion, to step outside normative beliefs and to disagree agreeably. These are really useful skills for any career.
It is also interesting to anticipate the future of AI and the role philosophy may play in a career with it. Aristotle wanted to understand the nature of beings and their functions. He might view AI as a fascinating artifact of human ingenuity, perhaps seeing it as a tool that extends human capacity for communication and knowledge retrieval. He may categorise AI inventions like ChatGPT within his framework of “techne” or craftsmanship, considering it as an example of human beings using their rational faculties to create something useful.
However, Aristotle might also raise questions about the limitations of AI. He might inquire into the extent of its understanding and its capacity for moral reasoning, and suggest that it is something we may end up relying on too much rather than thinking for ourselves. Aristotle emphasised the importance of practical wisdom and virtuous action, so he might question whether AI could possess such qualities or merely simulate them.
Philosophy graduates could help navigate the complexities of our rapidly evolving technological landscape. They are armed with a nuanced understanding of ethics, critical thinking and human values. It means they can serve as stewards of ethical AI development, advocating for transparency, accountability, and the protection of human rights. Their expertise in philosophy of mind could contribute to discussions on the nature of consciousness and the ethical implications of creating sentient machines. Philosophy graduates could therefore facilitate meaningful human-machine interaction, designing AI systems that prioritise empathy, inclusivity, ethical decision-making and possibly even AI rights!
Putting degree choices to one side for a moment, we must not forget that philosophy is also an important and practical tool to help us live well and in ways that we can flourish. It helps us think about purpose, what we value and our own moral compass. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the first psychotherapists, psychologists and life coaches. You only need to look at how popular the Stoic movement is becoming with various celebrities such as Adrian Edmondson and athletes such as Mark Tuitert practising and advocating Stoicism as way of life. It is for this reason that, alongside being a lawyer, I qualified as a philosophical life coach. I wanted to learn how to use the philosophical art of inquiry to specifically help people find the courage to understand themselves, find purpose and also to have a different sort of impact on the world by connecting with it more meaningfully.
Ultimately philosophy teaches us to think critically, to be open to and to respect the fact that there may be more than one way to view a problem. In an age that is so information-rich, philosophy teaches us that wisdom and knowledge are different. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, information, and skills acquired through education, experience, or learning. Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge and experience to make sound judgments, decisions, and choices. It involves deep understanding, insight, and discernment about the complexities of life, human nature, morality and the universe. Philosophy teaches us to love wisdom.
I meet the likeable MP Stephen McPartland at the House of Commons and immediately warm to his cheerful, optimistic nature. McPartland is one of those MPs who quietly and behind the scenes make the political weather without the general public being aware of it. The 47-year-old is leaving Parliament at the next election, and if I had to select somebody who embodies what will be lost after the next election when so many experienced members will be retiring, I would choose him. Whatever one’s politics, there will be an awful lot less experience of the kind the current MP for Stevenage in Parliament this time next year.
But before he does leave Westminster, the government has given him an important job to do – a sort of last hurrah. McPartland is leading the independent review into cybersecurity and economic growth.
The review was announced by the deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden in Lancaster House, that impressive venue modelled on the Palace of Versailles. It was an opportunity for the government to announce the Pall Mall Initiative whereby Britain, France and 35 other countries have agreed to increase efforts to stop hackers from targeting companies.
McPartland recalls the seriousness of the mood: “It was announced as quite a big deal. The idea behind it is that cybersecurity is an incredibly important product which the UK has to offer. We are seen as one of the world leaders and the government’s ambition is for us to become the cybersecurity superpower around the world so that UK technology and investments are seen as amongst the best.”
And so what is McPartland’s role in this? “I have been charged with doing an independent report into how we can change the narrative around cybersecurity so that it is seen as an enabler of economic growth as opposed to just purely a defensive measure.” McPartland is keen to emphasise the momentum which the industry has, explaining that in the last seven years the sector has grown from £5 to £10 billion, and currently employs almost 60,000 people in the UK. He says that the industry can grow exponentially to £40 billion over the next seven years: if such growth were achieved, it could create 120,000 jobs.
McPartland is keen to outline the scale of the opportunities. If we make progress in this area, cybersecurity could become a keystone of our future economy. “We have a greatly skilled workforce,” he tells me. “A lot of our children leaving school and going onto apprenticeships or to university all have technology skills. They have grown up with technology; they understand the importance of security. The younger generation don’t know anything other than technology. So we have a huge advantage there.”
So how can we win the future? McPartland is optimistic on this point too. “When you look around the world at our insurance, financial and legal systems, we are really respected and it’s a similar situation when it comes to cybersecurity, whether you think of GCHQ or the National Cybersecurity Centre. In addition to that, British intelligence is seen as very high quality.”
But in order to realise these opportunities, we also need to rethink the way we view cybersecurity. McPartland explains: “At the moment, cybersecurity is seen as something IT people do – it’s seen as reactive. But what I’ve been thinking about is the question of how you make cybersecurity an enabler of economic growth.”
To do this McPartland is looking at a range of areas. “One is the question of how you digitise your company faster. In particular, what are the barriers to digitising your company? These could be to do with regulation,” McPartland explains, “or perhaps it might be that there’s some problem in the supply chain.”
Another area the review will look at is exportability. “We’re looking at the question of how we can ensure that the UK is seen as a technology superpower for cybersecurity. It might be that we could provide some kind of internationally recognised standard – almost like a digital City of London so that it is globally recognised that we are the safest country in the world to do business with, and with the safest products.”
That leads McPartland into a third area which his review is looking at. “That’s about closing the skills gap and making sure we can work with the education system and employers to make sure that we have the skills we need. We’re also – and this is the fourth area – looking at the question of competitive advantage. Put simply, if you have got the safest product, you can use cybersecurity as a strategic advantage and it will also help you sell your product. That’s because the person buying your product is not only going to be backed up by great insurance, finance and legal skills but it’s also going to be the safest product.”
I’m interested to delve deeper into the employability issues and ask what kind of changes this deepening understanding of cybersecurity might bring? “There are big changes going on around the world at the moment. Looking at recent legislative trends in Europe and the US, you can actually see that there are going to be some changes at the very top of organisations which are then going to require a whole series of roles from the top down all the way to entry level. Essentially, cybersecurity is going to be very much like health and safety: it is going to be something that is integral to a company’s future. Some of those roles haven’t even been developed yet: this is one of those exciting fields where the solutions are moving at such a pace that it changes what happens behind it.”
How does all this fit in with the buzz around the AI sector? “I know there are a lot of young people who may be very interested in AI but you can’t really have an AI strategy without a cybersecurity strategy. However AI operates, you need to know that AI is secure and then you need to ensure that if somebody is going to use AI in a negative way that your products are then secure from that kind of use of AI. So the very essence of AI is going to create more need for in-depth and innovative cybersecurity.”
Much of what McPartland describes seems to open up onto the need to reskill the existing workforce in order to make cybersecurity an effective priority. When I ask him about this, he says: “There are already companies that are providing advice to boards on the type of questions they need to be asking around cybersecurity. A lot of those boards are very comfortable asking questions of auditors around finances and what they need to know – but they are not really sure what questions to ask around cybersecurity.”
I ask how the situation is for small businesses versus large FTSE 100 companies. McPartland explains: “As part of the review we are doing a call for evidence. Net Zero did 50 odd round tables over a year, and we did 26 of them in eight weeks. These range across the whole of the economic sector in the UK so we have everything from insurance to sports and entertainment. The idea is to get businesses of all different sizes to try and understand what the government can do to help. This is an independent report so although it has been commissioned by government, I can go off and talk to who I need to and then develop the recommendations and then government can respond to them. This is not something the government is telling industry: we are out there asking.”
And what will all this mean for the apprenticeships agenda? “There is a huge opportunity for apprenticeships. I have been a Member of Parliament for 14 years, and the number of apprenticeships in my constituency is massive. In any growth industry there is always huge opportunity for apprentices but the trick is to ensure you channel that growth so that those companies can then go off and hire those apprentices.”
All of this is very exciting and you can feel that McPartland’s is a boyish energy unlikely to be checked by the small matter of not being an MP anymore. As we walk off the Terrace at the House of Commons, I tell him he’s too young to retire – and he laughs it off, evidently happy to be in Parliament now, but knowing that for a man of his talents there will be much to do outside Westminster when that time comes. Meanwhile, once McPartland has handed in his report, the government is expected to respond to it in June. We’ll report back on its reception.
